The pastor didn’t mean to traumatize me with his sermon this
morning. He was talking about being
filled with the Spirit and being a blazing flame instead of a flickering pilot
light.
Pilot light? Uh-oh!
About the time of my 12th birthday, we had a problem with our
gas hot water heater. After 61 years,
some of the details are fuzzy, but I remember this as a two-day event. On the first day, the pilot light on the
water heater went out, but the gas continued to flow. We all began to feel ill, but as I remember
it, my Dad and I had been out of the house more that day than my Mother and
brother Bud, so they were feeling really ill, but Dad and I were still pretty
functional. At some point in this mess,
a rep of the utility company had come, and the problem was supposed to have
been resolved.
The next evening there was a special meeting going on at
church, and my Dad decided to attend. A
family friend had passed away, so Dad’s plan was to attend the calling hours
following the meeting at church. I was
left at home with Mom and Bud. I was the healthiest one who could tend to any
needs that arose.
During the evening, Mom and I both smelled gas again. Mom was still pretty weak and shaky. She said that she was going down to the
basement to light the pilot, and I should come with her since she was so
wobbly. She was my mother and at 12, I
wasn’t yet in the habit of teenage defiance of authority (actually, I never did
reach that point). Afterward, I wished
that I had argued with her that it was a bad idea. The basement was, after all, full of gas.
I helped her down the stairs.
She knelt in front of the hot water heater and confirmed that the pilot
was out. She said she would relight it
and struck the match. Flames shot out of
the hot water heater accompanied by a blast that knocked her backward. She flew past me. I smelled the awful odor of singed hair and
burned flesh. Her eyebrows were gone,
her hair was singed, and her right hand was badly burned. And there I was…the
responsible “adult.”
I got her up the stairs and into bed. I was terrified that there would be a larger
fire. I got on the phone and called the
church, but my Dad had already left for the calling hours. I don’t remember to whom I talked, but help
was on the way! Someone went to get my Dad,
and people from the church began arriving at our house to do whatever needed
doing. There was no such thing as 911 in
those days. A local doctor was called
and came to the house. The utility
company was called and arrived to shut off the gas and assess the situation. I remember a group of men standing on the
front lawn in animated discussion.
Mom’s hair and eyebrows grew back, but it took her hand months
to heal. I had guilt feelings for a long
time. I knew enough from my science
classes, that I felt I should have thought about the possibility of an
explosion. It was my first experience
with the realization that a situation might arise in which I could make a better
decision than one of my parents….who knew?
Long range outcomes have included:
*I have never had a gas range and avoid gas appliances whenever
possible…not that there aren’t risks with electric appliances. I could tell another story about that!
*I was once on a medication that I knew was messing with my
head, and my husband was out of town. I
told my young teen son that if he saw me doing anything unreasonable, he had my
permission to stop me. Sometimes a child
does make a better decision than the parent.
All of this has nothing to do with the pastor’s sermon which
was about the way in which the Holy Spirit manifests himself differently in the
lives of different people. I did manage
to shake off my unpleasant memories and pull my thoughts back to the sermon,
but here I am on a Sunday afternoon over six decades later reliving the event.
