The Light Bulb Problem
Maybe I was imagining it. But damned if every bulb in my house didn't start blowing the week my husband moved out. The problem was so persistent that for a while I even suspected some kind of sabotage on my husband's part. But my friend Eve assured me otherwise. 'Bulbs blow out all the time. That's what they do,' she said.
Well, of course I knew that bulbs blew out. But my perception after nineteen years of marriage was that soon after they always somehow became replaced. My husband prided himself on his skills in home repair, and I had long been secure in the knowledge that just say the word, and rooms that were temporarily dark would soon once again be light. Just as dripping faucets would eventually stop leaking and overflowing roof gutters made clear. There never seemed to be any question that these tasks, which my husband performed with cheerful vigor, were his preordained responsibility, separate and mysterious.
Certainly changing a light bulb—or any home maintenance task, for that matter—is hardly a question of gender. I know a multitude of men without the slightest interest in home repair. 'You have to understand,' replied the former owner of our house, when we questioned him about the wiring, 'I called an electrician when a light bulb burned out.' And my mother, who raised three children alone back in the fifties when everyone else, it seemed, had a father mowing the lawn and replacing storm windows, handled a lot more than light bulbs. I remember my mother in her long swishy dress, dreamily moving back and forth to the sound of Mantovani strings on the hi-fi, measuring, marking pencil spots on the wall, wielding a heavy electric drill to mount bookshelves. And today I know more than a few women like my younger sister, more adept at carpentry, electric wiring, and telephone installation than many nonprofessionals, my former husband included.
But my sister lived seven hours away and wasn't there to advise me when all my bulbs began going dark. My house required a staggering variety of bulbs. Beside conventional bulbs in all wattages, my light fixtures called for broad-faced recessed floods, spots, and reflectors, both direct and indirect; skinny undercounter fluorescents in varying lengths; round vanity bulbs, frosted and clear; bulbs that hid above semiopaque ceiling panels; microwave bulbs and refrigerator bulbs and even night-light bulbs the size of a thumb. (It never occurred to me one could actually replace a night-light bulb—night-lights always just seemed to be there, eternal and trustworthy.) Most daunting of all were two large ornamental wrought iron and glass lanterns residing on either side of the front door, each containing within its narrow interior a cluster of small flame-shaped bulbs. When these giant fixtures began to dim, I would stand beneath them, night after night, contemplating how one could possibly squeeze one's hand into slim crevices at the bottom to replace the tiny glass flames.
The gradual darkening of my home went on for weeks, during which time I left the dead bulbs alone. I suppose I was imagining, against all reason, that my husband would simply reappear in jeans one Saturday morning with his aluminum ladder to fix the problem as he always had. I was tempted to call him and say, 'Look, everything else aside, could you please come and change the bulbs?' But of course this was impossible.
Why, I wondered, was the sight of these dark bulbs so full of ill portent? Whenever I received no response to an overhead switch or found a dark shadow across my kitchen counter where there should have been a strong fluorescent beam, I shuddered. I had always hated dim light in general, but now more than ever these dead bulbs seemed to remind me of desolate places like musty hotel rooms and nighttime bus stations.
Eventually each dark corner or black closet interior in my house would confront me like a reproach: what are you going to do about this? Finally one late evening, as I carried my towel-wrapped two-year-old son from the bath, I reached for the switch in his room and encountered that awful pop and brief, loud spark, followed by darkness. Standing in the dark with my child in my arms, I faced the dismal truth: No one is going to fix this but you. He's not around to do this any more.
As luck would have it, there was a spare bulb behind the vacuum cleaner bags in the broom closet. And of course, it did not take long to figure out that replacing the rest of the bulbs in the house was no big deal. I soon learned that there was always someone at the hardware or lighting store who could identify and procure a required bulb. Back home, using a step stool or more often a kitchen chair, I'd screw the new one in. Problem solved: light where there was dark. I realized that in a house with leaking pipes and an aging septic system, the satisfaction derived from replacing a bulb was instantaneous. An easy high.
But what most came to mind as I brought my house back to light was the memory of my mother with her electric drill. I knew back then that this was not what most mothers did. I never saw any of my friends' mothers, or Donna Reed or Lucy Ricardo for that matter, sinking anchors into sheetrock for bookshelves. But watching my mother, after a long afternoon of drilling, slip each metal bracket into its slot with a satisfied expression, hearing those definite metallic clicks as she locked each one into place, I was proud. Maybe we didn't have a father in the house to protect us from ceiling leaks or from harm. But if my mother could build a wall of shelves, I knew she could do anything. We would be all right.
And finally, as I reached high from a chair in my son's room and gave the smooth new bulb in my hand that final twist that brings it back to life, instantly turning it from cold to warm, from gray to white, I realized it comes down to this: Each dark spot extinguished quenches a worry, each dark room illuminated quells a doubt. If I alone could bring this house back to light, perhaps I, too, could banish my sons' middle-of-the-night fears as well as their father once did when he carried them back to their beds with strong arms. Perhaps I would banish my own.
And when, for the rest of that long winter, I drove to my front door late at night to see every flame bulb in our lanterns, every last one of them, glowing brightly—when late at night, I would flip the switch in my dark kitchen to be greeted by an unwavering line of undercabinet light—I knew that in this house, in this home, all was well.
©2009. Jessica Bram. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Happily Ever After Divorce. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442 |
