Reflections on the Fourth Week of Summer – Something’s Burning 

    “Something's burning,” I yelled from the bedroom Wednesday morning.

    “Nothing’s burning,” Spence called from the great room sofa.

    Sitting on the edge of the bed to pull on knee sleeves for yoga, I mumbled, “Figures.” My husband often says I’m wrong. If a spilled morsel smolders on the burner rather than food burns in a pan, he doesn’t count that as “something burning.”

    The acrid odor intensified. “It’s getting stronger,” I yelled back.

    Footsteps thudded. “You’re right.”

    I stepped into the hall and coughed. Wispy white smoke floated above my head. I turned to look into the bedroom. A cloud of smoke nestled against the ceiling. Cremated breakfast? I joined Spence in the kitchen.

    Smoke billowed from the Dutch oven on the front right burner.

    With tongs Spence transferred three chicken breasts–golden brown on one side and charred black on the other–to a paper towel on a cutting board.

    “The front burner is acting up again.” Spence pointed to the bright red electric coil. “I had it on five, and the breasts browned fine. I flipped them and turned the burner to two, but the burner acted like it was on high.” With mitts on both hands, he lifted the smoking Dutch oven and carried it outside.

    The smell didn’t leave with him.

    I opened bedroom windows and turned on the guest room fan.

    “You’d think the smoke detector would go off,” Spence said when he stepped back inside.

    As if triggered by Spence’s comment, the smoke detector blared.

    We exchanged smirks on my way to turn on the bathroom fan. 

   He turned on the stove fan.

    I opened the kitchen windows then climbed the spiral stairs and opened the two loft windows. A cloud of translucent smoke hung from the ceiling to my waist. Sheesh. A malfunctioning stove in a log house is dangerous. To prevent a worse incident, we needed to fix the stove.

    Coughing, I descended the stairs and met our cat George on the middle step. He sat as still as a stone monument.”

    “You’re okay, George. You can move.”

    He didn’t budge. Had he heard my assurances above the blaring? I lifted my foot intending to nudge him, and the smoke detector stopped blaring.

    George turned and plodded downstairs.

    I followed, fetched the C & A Appliance Repair magnet from the refrigerator, and handed it to Spence. “You call.” He could explain what happened to Carl better than I could.

    Spence set the card on the coffee table. “I’m not going to call. I want to watch the stove for a while.”

    But he’d said again indicating this wasn’t the first time the burner overheated. Why did he want to wait? “Carl has reasonable rates,” I said. “He did a competent job for our washer-water-flow saga last year.”

    “I don’t want to spend fifty dollars to find out nothing’s wrong. I don’t want to trust old people’s memory.”

    Was this Mr. Be-Careful-Not-to-Trip-Over-the-Cat, Mr. Let-Me-Carry-that-Heavy-Bag, Mr. We’re-Not-Late [translation–You’re-Driving-Too-Fast]? Puzzled, I picked up Carl’s card and stuck it on the refrigerator.

    Old people’s memory.

    When we age, we’ve done automatic tasks like locking the car door so often that we can’t be sure we remember locking the door this time or one of the zillions previous times.

    I left the stinky kitchen and stepped onto the porch for Ashtanga yoga with a Rodney Yee DVD. Raindrops pattered on leaves, but I couldn’t smell the rain washed air. Charred odor from the Dutch oven at the other end of the porch clogged my lungs. I ignored the odor, enjoyed the breeze against my skin, and turned for a beginner version of revolved side angle.

    A baby cardinal fluttered to the porch railing three feet away.

    I held my pose like George’s stair statue while the fluffy brown fuzz ball gazed at me. The baby bird turned its crested head to the right, to the left, then diagonally up and down. Suddenly the baby jerked and zoomed away. Had it inhaled the acrid odor and fled?

    Mid morning, our son Charlie arrived after he’d supervised loading UPS vehicles and collected dirty laundry in his Seneca apartment. “Something burnt,” he said stepping inside the door.

    “You smelled it,” I said.

    “No, every window in the house is open.”

    Spence explained the baffling burner behavior to Charlie.

    “I noticed the back burner getting hotter,” Charlie said setting down his laundry bag. “That’s because the oven vents through it.”

    “Well, keep an eye on the burners for a while just to be sure,” Spence said.

    At noon, while I cut salmon for a fish salad sandwich, Spence set his laptop on the coffee table and walked to the kitchen. “I boiled water earlier, and the burner acted fine.”

    “Good to hear,” I said cutting pickles.

    He lowered his voice. “The old people memory thing . . .”

    “Yeah?”

    “Well, I intended to turn the burner down. Maybe I turned it up by mistake. I can’t be sure.”

    Remembering the numerous times I’d pushed the key fob button a second and third time just to be sure the car doors locked, I hugged Spence.

    Thursday evening, I wiped schmutz off the stove top. Half inch red lines marked the burner dials. Why would anybody paint red stripes on white dials? I squinted. The paint marked the tips of the handles which point to the temperature number. The other ends of the handles bisecting the dials were white. Helpful. Even with old people eyes, we could turn the business end to two while the decorative end pointed at nine. Not vice versa.

    For the rest of the week, no smoke gathered against ceilings, no smoke detectors blared, and no burner overheated. The burned chicken odor disappeared. Fragrance of milkweed wafted through the windows on rain washed breezes.

    Mr. Admonitions kept his watch on the stove and me. “Don’t do yourself a mischief pounding flowers too long,”

    I monitored his stove behavior with my nose and the red, burner-on light.

    We’re partners in this aging adventure.