After moving to a village a few hours north of my childhood home, I found myself missing almost everything about it, and my parents’ house is familiar; I know where to find a vase, where to find a screwdriver, and where my younger sibling’s candy stash is, then even though I haven’t used it in a decade, I miss the swing set in the backyard, then i miss the pantry, constantly dependably full of popcorn. I miss my parents’ neighbors (even the ones who constantly grumbled about sending our rogue soccer balls back over the fence). But there’s one thing about my childhood house that I was gleeful to leave behind: my family room, but despite being a shrine to everything that was hip in the 90s, the space just wasn’t cool. My parents’ air conditioner system couldn’t keep up. My room was the hottest in the summer, and the coldest in the winter. During my childhood, I never knew what the problem was: was it the Heating and Air Conditioning equipment, the HVAC duct, the way the equipment was installed, or something else entirely? My parents called an Heating and Air Conditioning contractor out a few times when I was a kid; the contractor would assess whatever heating or cooling problem my buddy and I were having, and it took everything I had not to jump out at the contractor from behind a corner and plead, “Can you please find a way to make the cool air reach my room?” But, I never did, and to compensate for the heat in the summer, I got plug-in fans. To split the icy chill in the winter, I used space heaters, now that I own my own arena, and I’m in charge of my own Heating and Air Conditioning situation, I finally have a family room that is officially cooled and heated!
