I adore these sun-scorched days. Days I begin by tucking up the house to capture the night’s cool. And end when I open the windows, crank up the fans, and revel in the downward slide of degrees as dark comes on. I will always take suffocating heat to deep cold. And always sun and sky to vistas of snow. Even knowing that lightning and irresponsible humans will make fire from my favorite ingredients.
But this summer’s heat has conjured memories. These ninety degree days have become a warm butter knife, slicing across time and space to other summer moments, to other places and people I’ve treasured. I remember . . .
Hot hot summer nights on Marlin Street when Mother and Daddy drove us around McPherson—inviting cool air through the wing windows. And stopped at the Rock Island train station so that Sonja and I could walk the rails until we felt vibrations under our sandaled feet. And then debated—in Pig Latin—whether to go for frosty A & W root beers.
Stifling Sunday afternoons when Daddy took us to his downtown insurance office and fretted over work while Sonja and I raced armless office chairs along the darkened cool aisles of desks.
I remember Mother’s impromptu picnics. Hot dogs and green beans and potato salad. Laundry mornings launched early—the sheets on the line dry before we’d hung the rest of the wash. Or the house quiet because Mother was outside weeding ahead of the sun. The brisk chill of enamel pans on my bare legs as I pitted Grandma Sherfy’s cherries or shelled Mother’s garden peas. The steamy hell of peach canning days in our tiny kitchen, blanching each batch of fruit in boiling water. Kool-aid our afternoon treat.
Vacations to Indiana and Iowa that began at four in the morning to put bearable miles behind us. Then sips of cold, metallic water from the Little Brown Jug thermos when we turned heat-numbed in the black Chevy. Daddy forever afraid of that old Chevy overheating.
Long, late June wheat harvest days at the Dreshers. Daddy in his element helping Don and the boys. While the rest of us—females—orchestrated enormous tailgate lunches.
I remember. . . Gettysburg’s stifling humid mornings in Mrs. Keefer’s sunporch standing in front of a fan to don my green gabardine suit, girdle, nylons, and small brown heels. Summer seasonal garb. We vied for shifts in the air-conditioned visitor center and the darkened Cyclorama aerie. I was spared sun-baked Little Round Top—not safe for a girl in 1968.
I took that fan to Williamsburg for a six-weeks seminar in historic preservation one summer and understood immediately why the first Jamestown residents might not have survived the claustrophobic, mosquito-friendly sauna of a landscape.
Then this heat drops me onto Helena’s Choteau Street and I’m doing dishes–sweating under the kitchen window as just a whisper of breeze and summer band concert music reaches me. Or, I’m hunched down among the raspberry stalks in the still, prickly heat–choosing distance from the girls’ squabbling to basement cool. I picture the freezer stocked with water bottles—relief intended for our tribe of miserably hot rabbits in the garage or on show at the even hotter fairgrounds.
I remember my Carnegie library stints in the cooler half-basement children’s department. And on the hottest days, Mrs. Eastham’s generous gift of limeades from Raleigh’s Drugstore even if—as the youngest employee—I was sent to fetch them.
There was that last semester of college when I sweltered over a book of softball rules in my dorm room. Written tests being my only chance for a decent grade in the required and hated sports classes. Really, the runners can’t steal bases??
Still I also remember sweet sweet summer evenings at Kendrick Legion field with Dave and the girls watching our rookie league pro baseball teams—dodging setting sunshine in the old, splintery wooden bleachers–still cooler than the fresh-faced boys from Arizona and Puerto Rico all with dreams of the majors.
Then that butter knife of memory slices into another time and place. Fourth of July fireworks across the Potomac as Bob and I cuddled on our blankets in Arlington Cemetery. Or treated ourselves to elegant picnics on summer afternoons at Wolf Trap—Gilbert and Sullivan or Rodgers and Hammerstein the backdrop.
I summon our North Fork days when the girls kept vigil by the porch thermometer—waiting for the mercury to reach 80—the temperature that Dave required to float the river. I remember even more poignantly those sun-kissed, damp, tired girls asleep in the back of the 4-Runner as we drove home to the cabins to photograph fish and fall into bed.
I am remembering the years when no power on earth—more specifically no heat– would have kept me from the pastures outside of White Sulphur Springs for the Red Ants Pants Music Festival. And the chance to dance under the stage to Ian Tyson and Corb Lund and Rodney Crowell and Red Molly and Parsonsfield.
And, in turn, those memories lead me to the July when I met Jean and Bryan on the train in Shelby for a Montana expedition—replete with broiling rodeos and powwows and boat rides and too much wine sitting outside an aging East Glacier motel—just in time to watch the saddle horses coming home from their day of tourist transportation.
Preceded by the life-changing magic and daunting humidity of Patmos—that brought music and precious new friendships and a commitment to words—these among others.
Finally that slicing knife of time comes back to this week in 2006 and a night so hot that Dave—still recovering from his stroke–chose to sleep in our basement while I went upstairs. Only to find him gasping–stretched across our bed in the wee hours. And then to hold his hand two nights later—as a radiant July sunset lit his dying face.
In the days following all I could do was move the sprinkler around our lawn—and come back inside to fall into sweaty sleep—hoping desperately to wake to a different reality.
I am barefoot tonight. Planning evenings of root beer floats with friends—preferably on the porch—though not possible until the sun goes down. Or I’ll make slightly sweet tea in a stainless steel bowl the way that the Gettysburg ladies taught me. I consider ice makers one of the great 20th century inventions. The cats—the boys—are ok but lethargic, still sleeping in spots that offer the illusion of cool. They came to live with me exactly two years ago. Before the smoke settled in, we had a month of startlingly beautiful, summer mountain and cloud drama. I will soon have a bountiful crop of tiny tomatoes for my friend Martha. With basil to match. I know better than to wear shorts. But if you catch me alone at home, I might be in dress. The house hums with my current bevy of fans. I sleep well in their lullaby and those blissful night breezes.
I love this heat. And the summer memories that grow fast and hardy and poignant in these luscious, scorched days. ©
