An appliance has much to say about parenting

My son, Zane, wanders. At 19, he doesn’t have a job, doesn’t attend school, and most days drifts in and out of the house.

My son, Aidan, however, does not wander enough. At 17, he comes out of his bedroom only to get grasshopper pie ice cream, then return to the world known as Minecraft. Parenting almostadults is a tough proposition, because you can’t give orders and you can’t give up. You can only give advice.

Zane and Aidan are mysteries, making wild noises, getting up at 3 in the morning to make TikTok videos. Yet when the therapists walk in, they are calm, quiet and a little confused by their dads’ attitude.

Which brings me to our poltergeist.

The Bedlam Blue Bungalow was built in 1926. It’s reasonable to expect a fair amount of strange noises in a 97-year-old home in the Outer, Outer, Outer, Outer Excelsior. The hum that comes up from our garage means the sump pump is working. A scritch against the window means it’s time to cut back the holly. A scratch at the bathroom door means the ghost of Krypto has returned.

Some noises mean an appliance has died. We’ve replaced the oven three times, the washing machine and the furnace twice, but the water heater only once. Seven years ago, either Aidan dropped magnets in the line or Zane shoved peanut butter into the burner. We’ll never know; it’s a mystery. But we got a replacement, a 50-gallon model, which lets me run the dishwasher and the washing machine at 4 in the morning.

In the past seven years, our sons’ showers have gotten longer, but other than that there’s been little wear-and-tear on that device. During the January rains, however, it began to moan. At first a little at a time, then for hours. Aidan shrugged, “It stops when I flush my toilet, but I can’t figure out why.” When Zane opened the door to the yard, it started again.

At 2 o’clock in the morning, I realized it had the same tone as a foghorn.

The first European ship to sail into San Francisco Bay was the San Carlos, commanded by Juan Manuel de Ayala, on Aug. 5, 1775. Didn’t take long for navigators to figure out that between the mist and the rocks, they needed a little bit of help. Although numbers vary, between 300 and 400 ships have reportedly collapsed or capsized in the bay’s notorious advection fog.

The first lighthouse on the bay was built on Alcatraz in1854. But with the mist fogging the lens, they needed a little audible help, so two years later, they installed a fog bell, which had to be rung by hand. Imagine, if you will, standing on an island in the middle of the bay, ringing a bell every time there’s a wisp of dew for about 500 hours a year.

They experimented with steam whistles and cannons but eventually came up with electrically operated air-compressor foghorns in the 1930s, just in time for the opening of the new bridge in 1937.

The Golden Gate Bridge has three foghorns under the roadway, and two on the south tower, each of them a different pitch. On average, they blast for about 2½ hours a day. In “Fogust” they can sound for five hours; in March, we might hear them for half an hour at most.

But our bungalow’s own private siren continued to sound. We called the water-heater replacement people. “Doesn’t sound like it’s a mechanical problem,” they advised. “You might want to call PG&E.”

We called PG&E. The minute that the serviceman rang the doorbell the humming stopped. “Shouldn’t happen,” he advised. “If it keeps up, call a plumber.”

It began again five minutes after he left. We called a plumber, who said he could come on Monday. By that time I’d figured out that the keening of the water heater banshee is an E above middle C, as I’ve had the chance to compare it to all 88 keys on our piano.

And, yes, it stopped just as the plumber parked his van. “Maybe you’ve got a ghost in the machine,” he suggested.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe our Klaxon warns us of a ship we cannot see, or tells us that not all who wander are lost.

And maybe we parents are appliances who double as foghorns. We bellow in the mist so our teenagers will know which rocks to avoid. We hum so they know their way home.

Parenting almost-adults is a tough proposition, because you can’t give orders and you can’t give up. You can only give advice.