A Christmas Miracle (Retrospective)

Or How I Spent $80.46 on Nine Volt Batteries on Christmas and am Not Even Bitter About it at All

I woke on Christmas morning with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart, or at least as much as I’m able to greet the morning with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart. In hindsight I should have taken some time to savor the moment, the silence of the household and the prospects of the day as my chipper state was not to last.

It was, all told, a lovely morning if a bit gray and my family was fast asleep. It was the first Christmas in over a decade that I hadn’t spent the previous night wrapping presents until some ungodly hour in the morning. This ritual, as most parents know, is followed just a few hours later when little children wake up and meticulously unwrap all of our hard work while we attempt to come to some state of awareness while downing gallons of coffee. All in all the whole process sounds a bit silly but, then again, so does the idea of a morbidly obese man slipping down a chimney to leave presents with only a glass of milk and a few cookies in return.

I suppose that it is in this way that holiday magic is created.

And so after an unusually lengthy sleep that lasted all of six hours I practically bounded down the stairs to make coffee for my wife. I even made breakfast. It was shaping up to be a decent Christmas day but, sadly, it was not to be.

About the time the rest of my family roused themselves from their slumber, ambled downstairs and tucked in to their cinnamon rolls I thought I heard a distinct “chirp” originate from somewhere inside the house. It was almost inaudible, so much so that I wasn’t even certain I’d heard it. I waited for a few minutes for it to repeat and, when it did not, I resumed breakfast.

But then a few minutes later I heard it again. I glanced around the table to see if my loved ones had also heard the sound but before anyone could answer, there it was again. Our oldest dog Tinkles, who is all of five years, began to pace and pant. Our youngest dog, The Nibbler, who would be oblivious to any sound rating less than a ten megaton blast began licking his wiener.

“Was it a bird?” I wondered, “A mouse or even (shudder) a rat?”

It was only when I listened closely that I was able to identify the sound as the terminal chirp of a smoke alarm shortly before its battery goes to the big retail store in the sky. My blood ran cold but I calmly reassured my family that I knew the source of the problem and bounded up the stairs to find the culprit.

Despite my reassurances to the contrary I was not optimistic about finding the ailing smoke alarm. Past experience had shown me that such a seemingly simple endeavor was a bit more complex than logic or common sense would imply. There are precisely five smoke alarms on the second floor of our home and each one is within close proximity of the other. Their placement makes it somewhat difficult to identify which one is in need of service during trying times like these. Also (and just for fun) we have a sixth alarm, placed by some sadistic contractor, that resides in the rafters of our attic and only seems to need attention in the middle of the night.

Now, I know that smoke alarms save lives and I’m glad to have them around, mostly. I do wonder, though, how many marriages they’ve ended with their knack for conking out in the wee hours of the morning. Most people I know aren’t at their best or most thoughtful at that hour and may or may not be prone to saying some unkind things to loved ones when searching for the soon-to-be deceased alarm. Not me though. I’m generally a delight to be around regardless of the hour.

This time I was moderately awake and thankful for the fact. It was an unusual state of mind for me, being thankful, but like many aspects of the morning it was not to last. I determined that the offender was the smoke alarm on the landing and, after running back downstairs to get a step ladder, dismantled the device and left it upstairs. And then, just before we began to open the presents I heard the chirp again.

“Not to fear,” I told my wife and daughter with, perhaps, a tad more certainty than I felt. After bounding up the stairs once again I opened all of the doors to our bedrooms and glanced expectantly upwards.

Chirp

Was it in the master? My daughter’s room? The office? Could it be in the attic? I waited until I heard it again.

Chirp.

It still seemed to be coming from the gaping hole left by the smoke alarm I’d just dismantled but that couldn’t be. The problem, I reasoned, was that all of the alarms were too close to each other. Neither one was more than ten feet from another, maybe less. Their placement made sense from the standpoint that smoke would, most likely, have to pass by the alarm itself before going further into a room and thereby giving us a more timely warning. Logistically at this point their placement was posing some issues.

I looked for a sign. Not a burning bush kind of sign but something more subtle like, perhaps, a blinking red light to indicate the alarm’s condition. My heart leapt when I discovered that the alarm in the guest bedroom had a blinking red light but quickly fell when I discovered that all of the alarms had a light that blinked red from time to time. With slightly less confidence than before, I took down the alarm in the guest bedroom and relieved it of its battery.

Chirp.

There it was again.

By this time Tinkles, who was many fine qualities but is a bit prone to anxiety, was panting like she’d been on a five mile run and looking like she was about to have a cardiac event. The Nibbler continued to lick himself and remained completely unware of the events around him. We let Tinkles outside but,as the temperature was hovering around five degrees, this was only going to be a temporary measure. Decisive action was needed and, as such, I decided to remove all of the smoke alarms from the second floor as well as the one in the attic. Once they were all removed I placed them carefully on the buffet downstairs and breathed a sigh of relief.

Chirp.

Son. Of. A. Bitch. At this point the sound appeared to be coming from all portions of the house. I calmly (and without any cursing at all) instructed my wife and daughter to take an alarm while I watched the other three.

Chirp.

Each of us looked at the other. It was clear from our confused looks that the only thing any of us could determine was that none of us were in possession of the chirping alarm. It seemed to still be coming from upstairs but there were no alarms upstairs, at least none that I was aware of. I briefly considered tearing through the plaster ceiling on the landing with a claw hammer but then, upon hearing a hearty “chirp” once again, decided that stronger measures like the removal of our entire second floor might be necessary.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. My wife suggested that we call someone a bit more experienced in these things. I wish I could say that I politely declined but I was well past the point of manners. Instead I began a heated “discussion” revolving around the assumption that I wasn’t an idiot and that there was no possible way for anything to be chirping upstairs unless is was ghost of one of the goddamned smoke alarms.

My wife, for her part, began calling friends and neighbors and leaving messages about my incompetence. I chose to set off for Walgreens, the only store open on Christmas, to procure five nine volt batteries in the misguided hope that throwing money at the issue would solve the problem. By the time I returned Tinkles was still outside and could not even be enticed to come inside with a dog treat. The Nibbler, per usual, was still cheerfully licking himself and the chirp had still not been exorcised from our house.

With limited hope for success I installed new batteries in each smoke alarm only to hear the chirping once again that was now, most certainly, coming from the upstairs. It was at this point that my mother and sister arrived to celebrate Christmas. Upon seeing us all still dressed in our pajamas and a bit flustered my mother assumed that we’d just woken up. She turned around dejectedly and proceeded to walk back to her car while muttering something about how she’d “come back when we were ready.”

By this time we’d been dealing with the smoke alarm for three hours and I regret to say that I was not at my best. I was a tad off my game and may have yelled at my mother, the woman who gave me life and whom I love and cherish, to “get her ass back into this Goddamned house,” in the heat of the moment. I like to think that I didn’t.

However it may or may not have happened it was my wife, as always, who came to the rescue. She managed to cajole my mother back into our home and we all decided to go upstairs one last time in search of the “chirp” before finding a hotel. The five of us might have been able to deal with the sound but Tinkles was on hypothermia’s door outside and surely couldn’t. Once we were on the landing I stared at the hole in our ceiling with murderous intent. My wife did so more thoughtfully.

Chirp.

There it was again, coming from the landing which made no sense at all…until I remembered that we had a carbon monoxide sensor plugged into an outlet that was discretely hidden by a chair on the very same landing we happened to be on.

Somewhat abashed I explained the issue and then promptly threw the carbon monoxide detector in the trash outside completely out of spite. A few minutes later one of our neighbors called in a slightly amused tone that implied he was curious as to how he could be living next to someone so dimwitted as to be unable to identify a faulty smoke alarm.

Now it would be natural to assume that the miracle of the holiday was that I was able to take a deep breath, put the events of the morning behind me and enjoy Christmas and that would be true. It would also be normal to imagine that the miracle that day was that my family didn’t demand that I pack off to a reasonably priced hotel room after the way that I’d acted and that would be true as well. The real miracle of the season, however, is that I wasn’t bitter about spending over $80 for a bunch of nine volt batteries that were entirely superfluous. Not bitter at all. Not even a little bit.

About the Author

derekbremer Prior to his life as a stay at home father Derek spent more than a decade performing public relations and marketing functions for financial consulting firms and found the job to be precisely as exciting as it sounds. When not tending to his wife or daughter Derek enjoys subjecting the public to his unique take on fatherhood, travel and animal husbandry. He has been published in Scary Mommy, Sammiches and Psych Meds, The Good Men Project, HowToBeADad, Red Tricycle, RAZED, HPP and the Anthology "It's Really Ten Months Special Delivery: A Collection of Stories from Girth to Birth.