The Heat Is On

It’s not clear how old I was when I started hating the feeling of being hot.  Every summer I slept with the fan on a chair beside my bed blowing directly onto my body.  After many complaints, Dad consented to get an attic fan, but I wasn’t fooled when my parents talked about how it would cool the house at night.  Luckily my neighbor Kim was usually generous in inviting Tammi, another friend with cheap parents, and me over in the afternoons to watch the Cubs on WGN, switching off to All My Children and General Hospital.  Sometimes, though, Kim would get sick of us and I would have to find other amusements in the scorching afternoons.  The only thing I had the energy for was reading.  I devoured the books from my mom and sister’s shelves:  The Winds of War (longer than it needed to be), Lolita (I thought she was a little brat), Shogun (where I learned about scurvy and how the Japanese were much cleaner than Europeans), The Day Kennedy Was Shot (I wanted to see the pictures of the gore so well-described).  It is pretty funny that Mom wouldn’t let me read Judy Blume’s Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret and Then Again Maybe I Won’t because they were inappropriate. 

Until we moved to Rhode Island, it never occurred to me that we would have to spend a large amount on a normal house without a/c, when that same amount would have bought a McMansion in Indiana, complete with bonus room, 3^rd bay in the garage, and air conditioning.  After three weeks of using my fan on the chair method, we installed central air.  Yes, it cost a ton, but it has been worth every cent.

On Wednesday, the thermometer read 74 degrees at 6 a.m., and I knew running would be impossible.  So I did what any privileged white woman would do--I went to a hot yoga class.  I told the yoga studio owner about how heat raises cortisol which is a problem for those of us experiencing  perimenopause.   I also suggested that, since there are a lot of women my age who are probably feeling the same symptoms, maybe she could offer classes that were not heated.  She looked me in the eye and said, “I hear you.” She then proceeded to crank up the heat and teach a very active vinyasa class.  At the end of class, she talked about how we tell negative stories to ourselves and we should not believe them.  I knew she was talking to me, and since I felt so great, I had to laugh.  I even drove home with the a/c off and sunroof open to the blazing sun, singing very loudly to the Staples Singers.  I wondered if I wasn’t really heat averse, but just made that up.  It has been a long tale of woe, this battle I have with heat.  But what if it was just in my mind?   

Later that afternoon, it was 98 degrees when I walked across the concrete quad to teach the first class of the semester in Fogarty Hall.  The classroom was stifling.  There was just one lonely fan, very similar to the kind I had placed beside my bed so long ago, to cool off about 300 square feet.  Within five minutes, my dress was sticking to me and my brain downshifted into just one lament: must-get-out-of-here. My students and I abandoned this beautifully appointed classroom for a cramped space with a makeshift whiteboard and no digital technology, but with blessed air conditioning. 

If there’s a lesson here, I am sure it is that my dependence on air conditioning reflects a lack of character.  It reflects my privilege as well—I get to choose whether to be hot or not.  There are many New Englanders who see surviving the heat as a badge of honor with tales of mold growing on tables due to the humidity and sweating the second they step out of the shower.   Still others do not have a choice. 

We are currently experiencing the hottest summer on record in New England and there is no evidence that it is going to get better.  There is evidence that I am not alone in my cranky response to heat: hot weather increases crime.  I suggest that our politicians and scientists find and fund environmentally responsible ways to keep us cool.  And I solemnly pledge that if I ever win the lottery, I will pay for everyone to have air conditioning who wants it.

Lessons from Mavis Staples

The boundaries between my world and the world of another being get pushed back with sudden clarity, an experience both humbling and joyful. 

                                                                                    (Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2003, p. 9)

Many of our friends travel to Provincetown, on the very tip of Cape Cod, for vacation.  Just a two hour drive for us, it still seemed like a hassle with traffic choking the narrow roads lined with old-fashioned motels and shops selling tourist gear.   How much different could it be than Hyannis, our regular Cape hangout, or Newport, which is a mere 30 minutes away from our house? 

It is completely different.  Sure, in Hyannis or Newport I would have been able to buy the underwear I forgot to pack.  In Ptown, no such luck, as this town has no room for basics, especially for women.  It has art galleries, galleries of stuff that is not art, at least to my untrained eye, and lots of shops with provocatively-themed shirts and posters.  It is a place where anyone can display and celebrate his or her (mostly his) weirdness, or simply just be themselves knowing that they will not be judged, and if they are, who cares?    

It was here Nels and I had one the best days of our lives, even though we managed to miss the annual Carnival parade.

 We took a whale watch tour early in the day on the advice of friends.   Even though we were assured we would see whales, I was not prepared for what that actually meant.  The whales apparently spend the summer feeding at the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary before heading to the Caribbean for winter. 

On the ride out to the Sanctuary, I was struck by how small I felt in the midst of all that water.  How  unimportant.  Something clicked into place: a reminder that nature is more vast and mysterious than I usually think about.  Although I spend significant time in Colt State Park and on the East Bay Bike Path, these places are curated for both human and animal activity.  In contrast, the open ocean is a place of true wildness.  

The whales were magnificent.  Graceful, playful.  Such joy in their movement.    Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote that all living things speak a particular language, even the mosses she studies.  She suggests that long ago we all spoke the same language, but that has been lost as beings have evolved into many kinds of species.  These whales seemed to be communicating with one another and with us, a large group of admirers.   One whale would flap her fin up in the air as if she was waving, then slap it down on the water, creating huge splashes of sound and spray.  Three of them would swim together and then descend below the water one by one.    Even as I describe what I see, words are not enough to convey the fullness of the experience—the emotional and spiritual and joyful.  Bounded by the space of a boat filled by tourists speaking multiple languages, we all were part of something bigger than ourselves. 

That night we went to church.  Not one of those stuffy New England cathedrals where I feel the need to tiptoe and whisper with a feeling of not-good-enough.     Instead, we went to the church of soul music held in the Payomet Tent with the Divine Ms. Mavis Staples presiding, 80 years old and perhaps five feet tall. 

Mavis did not preach.  Instead, she invited us to listen, to sing, to dance, to reach out.   Her message of racial and political unity went straight to my heart and body through music.  She sent out incredible love and drew us into the conversation about what is needed to make this country a more equitable place.  Have you ever listened to Respect Yourself?  

If you disrespect anybody that you run into

How in the world do you think anybody’s s’posed to respect you

Take the sheet off your face, boy

It’s a brand new day

Mavis told us we have work to do.  She was open and honest about what we face as individuals and communities, and she did it joyfully and with eyes wide open.   We had front row seats, and she reached out and grasped my hand at two different times.  I felt recognized—more than that, I felt called to her mission. 

Earlier in the day, I felt my unimportance looking at the vastness of the ocean.  The day ended with me realizing that, I may indeed be insignificant, but what I do matters.  This paradox encloses lots of other small contradictions I am recognizing lately:  the need to let people be who they are versus the wish that they were different.  The call to bear witness versus the urge to fight.  The search for identity and clarity versus staying still in the muck and mess.

Then I remember both/and can replace either/or.  I can feel insignificant and yet have impact.  I can accept people even if I don’t want to hang out with them.  Bearing witness is a form of resistance to oppression.  Clarity may arise from the muck.  Love and justice go together. 

    

The Willingness and the Stuff

When we moved into our house back in 2005, Dad and I painted the whole first floor while Nels was away on a business trip.  Mom found it endearing that the couple who owned the local hardware store closed early on Wednesdays so they could go golfing.  It was a memorable time with my parents, even as the painting process seemed impossibly long and tedious.  Mom said it was their best vacation, but that may have been the fumes she inhaled from the solvent she used to scrape old paint from the wood trim. 

Fast forward to the present and the need for change is in the air again.  But…but. You know how it is when something needs to get done, but the job is so big you want to pare your ambitions down to lying on the couch and binge-watching The Crown?  Luckily, when Nels asked when I wanted to start painting, I said, “tomorrow” and he thought I meant it.  The painting tools came out of the shed, new supplies were purchased at Ace Hardware, and raggedy t-shirts and sweatpants were dragged out of drawers.

We had to start where painting always starts, the ceiling.  After two days of moving paint sheets around and trying to determine if I had actually painted sections or was just painting the same space over and over, we were done.  The ceiling was a vast sea of whiteness and I couldn’t tell where I had been and what I had missed.  I still can’t.

After diving into Pinterest, I was convinced that the walls should be blue to contrast with the brown furniture.  Plus I wanted a darker color to pop against the new white windows we were putting in.  But what shade of blue?  How light, how dark?  How gray, how purple?  Then I brought home some samples and realized there was no freaking way I was committing an entire floor to blue.  I gave up on being creative and went with Benjamin Moore’s Edgecomb Gray, a reasonable neutral guaranteed to look good in sunlight and shade. 

There is a lot to know about paint and painting.  And what you know about painting, you have to know about yourself.  Benjamin Moore has a paint style called Aura which dries really fast and requires a different painting technique.  Sorry, no.  Neither one of us felt like experimenting.  This project also reinforced our knowledge of one another.  Nels is the detail guy and painted four coats of white, two of primer, two of paint, on all eight dark-stained window frames.  Because the semester was starting, I was only available in fits and starts.  While I was happy to take down art and switchplates, spackle holes, wipe down surfaces, and roll some first coats of color, he ended up doing 90% of the work.   I am proud that he let me paint some of the baseboard heaters.   That showed his faith in me, as those required some technique.  Our relationship survived because we stuck within our respective zones—I picked the colors and did the sloppy grunt work and Nels did everything else.

Speaking of couples who let each other do what they do, my Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Andy have been married for a very long time and are clearly used to each other’s quirks.  She still laughs at his goofy jokes and puts up with his stubbornness, and he ensures that she, who needs an oxygen tank 24/7 and can only see peripherally, has what she needs. 

Aunt Chartie (or as I grew up calling her, Aunt “Shotty” from my mother’s southern pronunciation) and I talked on the phone shortly after Thanksgiving.  She and Uncle Andy had gone over to a friend’s house, and the friend, in his 80’s just like them, had served cranberry sauce from a can.  Later that week, Andy decided he wanted real cranberry sauce and made it himself with her input.  She and I discussed what it took to do something like that outside the context of holiday requirements.  She said, “It takes the willingness and the stuff.”  Not only does a person have to want to put in the time, but they also have to obtain what is needed and have support. 

I recalled this as Nels and I were painting over the last six weeks.  It was a huge project and we just had to make the decision to begin.  Luckily, we could afford to buy the paint and our schedules are somewhat flexible, so we had the willingness AND the stuff.  Similarly, a student must be willing to learn, but she must also have the “stuff”--including time, support, and adult care, to do the work.   Too often we forget that there are multiple aspects to learning.

Aunt Chartie died last week at the age of 85.  Every time I look at our freshly painted home, or work with students, I will remember her words.