Thoughts on the beginning of summer

Wow. I just "rediscovered" this blog. And reread all my posts, which I must admit, I enjoyed. I really love to write, but so rarely take the time! I hope I can work on that.

Today was the first really hot muggy day of summer, complete with tornado warnings and rum and tonics on the patio. When you live in a generally cool state, you don't often really feel the need for air conditioning. Today was one of the days when it would be really awesome to have it! But we live in an 82 year old home with radiator heat, and having central air installed would be about as much as a new car. I have often said we could buy a lot of window units for that. Trouble is we never do it. And until days like today become the norm rather than the exception (usually about mid-July), the sheer effort of dragging the air conditioners out of their winter storage spots in basement and attic is just not worth it. Cool baths and cold drinks before bed are much simpler solutions.

How is it that we have become so conditioned to conditioned air? When I was a child, no one had air conditioning. On hot summer nights, you flung open the windows, strategically positioned fans, slept in the buff and sweated. The adults would sit out in the yard with cold drinks, the ice making soft chinking noises over the backdrop of the crickets as the talked softly outside my window. Even the glow of the streetlights seemed somehow hot, and heat lightning would occasionally flicker in the southern sky.

I would lay in my bed, my feet covered with a sheet, staring at the ceiling and I would just know I would never fall asleep. No, never, not in that heat. The sweat beads would trickle down my chest, and I would turn the pillow over and over, vainly seeking the cool side (is there anything better than a cool pillow on a hot night?). I would count the fireflies I could see flicking on and off in the bushes in the back yard. I'd wish I was in my blue plastic pool, the grass clippings littering the surface of the slighly dingy, tepid water. I would listen to my mother brushing her teeth in the bathroom next to my room, and call her for another drink of cool water. Lying there in the dark, I was SO HOT I was NEVER going to sleep, never, ever . . . . .

And then it would be morning, the sun already hot as it tried to muscle its way through my window shade. Another sunny day, just like the one before it, another link on a golden chain of endless joyous summer. A few decades later, my summer begins like this, with the heat and humidity telling me that I will never sleep, the sweat trickling down my chest, and the prospect of another summer day ahead.

I must admit, summer is my least favorite season, but today, even with the storms, even with the hair-curling humidity, even with the hot stuffy air, I am glad summer is finally here. But I do wish we had air conditioning!