"Sleeping with Fans"

My relationship sleeping with fans is a long and difficult one.

As a kid, we had a big box fan in the second story of our suburban split level house without air conditioning, which my father would position in the window in my brother's room. He had it, smartly I know now, forcing hot air out of the house, and pulling cooler air through. At the time though, I just could not understand why that fan had to be blowing out. Every ounce of my being wanted to take that fan, first of all, from my brother's room to mine, and then have it blow ON me until I felt cooler.

I had a karmic recurrance of this parental frustration when my freshman year roomate, in our 12 by 14 dorm room, insisted on sleeping with a big 'ol box fan blowing directly on her at full speed. I may add that she slept a lot, too, and at odd times, sometimes. On the floor, we all mocked her, and her fan. In fact, somewhere, I think I even have a picture of her sitting on the floor, with her fan taken apart, lovingly cleaning its blades. At least she was neat.

Well, now, we have an old farmhouse in Upstate NY without air conditioning, and we have an assortment of fans that we postition differently throughout the house to keep things cool. It works well for most of the summer, barring the inevitable hot as Hades night where I lie in my bed and curse that my father instilled in me a practicality that scorns air conditioning. There is another inevitable as well, the cool night, where you go to bed and realize the fans are not needed. You shut them down, crawl under the covers, and end up COMPLETELY unable to sleep.

That was last night here.

It was the night where you realize that that sound...the constant whirr of the motor...has become your white noise, and instead you are now alone, in the dark, with a snoring husband. In an attempt to tune that out, you hear every car that drives down the road. You hear insects, and with insects there are surely bats, and you start to think of the fact that they could be circling your house right now, determined to find their way in. You toss, you turn, you just plain don't sleep. You start to make lists. You sing song lyrics in your head. You worry, perseverate, fret. Insanity sets in.

Then the next day, you drink your coffee in the morning, and iced coffee in the afternoon, less for pleasure and more for survival.

Tonight, temperatures be what they may, that fan will be a blowing. Lake breeze or no. Yes, tonight we will begin our relationship again, my fan and me. I know that in the fall I will have to make the break, and go back to a white noise free existence...

But it's not fall yet!