Well kids, it's the end of July and there's no doubt in anybody's mind that it's summer. We've already weathered several heat waves at The Mecca, the first of which was a five day stint of triple digits that brought a whole house fan into our lives and wilted my garden something vicious. The garden is recovering and the dog is slowly coming to an understanding with the fan along the lines of "You keep running loudly like that and I'll cower in terror in the lap of whoever happens to be sitting on the couch downstairs, ok?" The dog has a similar deal going with the bug zapper, and when we turn it on he races upstairs to hide in the shower. I fully expect him to have a nervous breakdown when the fan and the bug zapper are on simultaneously.
I don't run the risk of a nervous breakdown in the heat, but I do get irritable (which is a really nice way of saying that I bitch up a storm). I try not to complain but I tend to fail and I definitely repeat "It's hot" a lot. All I want to do is lie down in a darkened room and watch mindless television, which makes me lousy company. This past weekend was the second in what appears to be a series of heat waves around here (collect them all!) and I was a real puddle of misery yesterday afternoon.
I've never been great in the heat - I get dizzy and woozy, or I space out. Heat waves give rise to conversations that go something like:
Dave: Um, are you ok?
{long pause as I stare at the cement}
Dave: Do you need to sit down?
{I look up with the uncomprehending eyes of a docile cow}
Dave: OK, yeah. Have a seat. I'm just going to get you an ice pack.
I do considerably worse when I'm standing and it's hot than when I'm sitting. I don't think I lock my knees anymore, for instance. I learned that lesson the hard way after fainting while playing outfield in 8th grade. My sensitive schoolmates threw a softball at my head to see if I'd wake up. When I didn't I was hauled off to the office for an ice pack and a glass of water. Still, if I stand in one place too long in the heat, the world telescopes in on itself and I have to sit down right now. This tendency towards lightheadedness was worse when I was in junior high because I hadn't yet learned to heed my body's warnings so I'd push myself way too far for fear of looking stupid. That was how I came close to passing out innumerable times in the choir loft during masses. It was hotter up in the loft than in the rest of the church and standing around breathing deeply and singing in the heat was a sure recipe for disaster. If it was a high mass of some sort and there was incense involved you might as well have hit me on the head with a hammer and counted me out from the start. My fellow sopranos quickly learned not to pay any attention when I sat down in the middle of the Profession of Faith because it was better than the picking me up off the floor and watching me do my imitation of Jesus (she rises again!!).
Even though I've learned how to prevent getting the vapors like some sort of modern day Melanie Hamilton, I'm still not happiest when it's hot. My best defense against the heat is a cool bath and a long book. I can stay in the tub for hours. Last week Dave walked in the bathroom to ask a question, noticed the novel in my hand and the biography on my towel, and pronounced the bath a "two-booker". I perfected the bathtub escape trick in France because summer in Montpellier was oppressive and humid. I once stayed in an icy tub until the beds of my fingernails turned blue and only then did I drag myself out. Within 10 minutes I was covered once again with a thin film of sweat and I began to wonder whether two baths in one day was excessive.
But this past week there was no escape because the floor of our guest bath had new tiles but no grout. So no cooling baths for yours truly, which was a pathetic state of affairs. The worst part of it was that our new floor tile looks like a swimming pool, so I'd walk past the bathroom and gaze at the watery shimmering tile and long to dive head first into the blue coolness. Of course, I would have crashed into the floor, which wouldn't have helped my comfort level, so I resisted. But I'll tell you, there were a few times when I seriously contemplated whether it would be more unpleasant to be knocked out or continue sweltering in consciousness. It was a terrifically tough call.
The only really good thing about hot weather is sitting outside in the evenings. I love coming home after work, putting on some tunes and hanging out in the backyard. It doesn't matter whether I'm with friends or my husband or alone with a book; I like listening to the birds, watching the planes overhead on their approaches, listening to the music that wafts from my stereo.
Usually on these nights the music is big band swing from the 40's and early 50's. I have eclectic taste in music to be sure (my collection contains everything from Ozzy Osbourne to Prokofiev to Disney soundtracks and everything in between) but nothing really works on sultry summer days like big band. I can't listen to Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" without thinking of summer afternoons of my childhood, sitting outside with my extended family under the big striped umbrella. My dad would usually put Glenn Miller's Greatest Hits on the stereo and the music would drift through the screen door out to us.
I remember one lazy afternoon as we waited for the sun to abate enough to allow us to start the BBQ, "In the Mood" came on the stereo. The heat made us all sleepy and stupid so conversation had died. Someone at the table, I don't remember who, began humming the bass line of the tune. Just the bass line. Soon someone else took the trumpet line. Over the course of the song everyone sitting at the table took a single instrument and just went to town humming only their part the song. It was an unrehearsed vocal orchestration that fell apart when the first person broke down with the giggles. The Big Band Swingers (which really consisted of me, my grandmothers, my great aunt, my father and his sister) were never to repeat a performance in our backyard, but it was a crystal moment of my childhood that I remember as clearly now as if it had happened this morning.
I have other music in my collection that can be traced directly back to childhood memories as well. The soundtrack to "The Sting" - and indeed any Joplin-esque music - reminds me of slide shows that my father put on. I honestly can't remember how often this happened but on various holidays after dinner and dessert, my father would haul the slide projector and the big fold-up silver and blue screen out of the closet and set them up in the living room. We'd arrange chairs from the dining room while ordering my mother to turn off the dishwasher. Soon images of people I didn't know but who looked suspiciously like my parents dressed up as hippies would begin flashing on the screen. The tinkling piano of "The Entertainer" is inexorably tied in my mind to the sucking whir of the projector's fan because my dad always played the soundtrack to "The Sting" during these shows. My father would run the projector and make requests of my mother for certain slide carousels (we had an entire closet wall stacked with these things). She'd duck into the closet under the stairs searching with a flashlight for "Christmas 1975 number 2" as stories about my family flew back and forth and laughter filled my ears. Scott Joplin is tied to my understanding of my family's history.
So I don't like the heat itself but I don't mind at all what it makes me think of. Summers seemed endless as an ocean, deep with possibilities. Twelve weeks that were both too short and infinite somehow. Accepting the furnace blast of heat when I go outside now is a small price to pay for such memories, and I can never capture them quite as easily in December. The heat makes me slow down, take stock, think more ponderously. And maybe that's not such a bad thing.I'm willing to bet I'd think more clearly if I could use my bathtub though...
- KNP July 27, 2003
