We had one window unit at first. It went in mom’s room, and a chain of fans theoretically brought the AC into mine and my sister’s rooms. A few years in and we got a second, newer AC we figured would go in the diningroom, thus maybe actually making the house cool. Instead, the one in mom’s room got switched out; the new one in there, the older one in the diningroom. Eventually I’d ask enough for my own AC I got one for Christmas, and I remember opening in in the already chilled home in winter, a grim satisfaction, ancient and human, innate for the feeling of being prepared. Sister whined that she didn’t get one, but Mom pointed out it was “the only Christmas present (I) asked for.”
Before I got the Christmas AC, though, there was just me laid out in my sweat. I had a ceiling fan that creaked, and didn’t do much unless it was on the highest setting. The world had just begun to talk about Global Climate Change, and despite the general scoffing of every teacher at my school, I believed them. They didn’t get it; they probably all had ACs in their room.
Eventually it was all too much, and I moved my big denim blanket out to the screened in porch off the back of our house. My mom’s AC churned away off the back of this, but the porch was open on three out of four sides, and the cross-breeze offered far more relief than the promise of a fan half-tiled towards my bed. I’d lay open to the elements, and sometimes rain would pound down on the metal roof and the air inside would go crisp as the first bite into a perfect apple, and I’d breathe deeply and feel alive in my limbs.
The AC was a relief, but less so. I missed the porch that summer, and tried more than once to go out there anyway. Yet the AC had broken some part of me to it. My body–human animal, innate–wanted comfort. It’s always been my downfall, that. I stayed in my room with the AC and let myself breathe easy, consistent, safe.
It’s gone boiling here without us really noticing; not in a way where we do something about it. I yearn often for a big, screened-in porch for us, but now it’s hot out and I worry we’d fade back into the AC out of necessity. It was never supposed to be this hot, here. Yet it happened slow enough it’s hard to act quickly about it.
I miss sweat when it wasn’t dangerous. I miss heat just heavy enough that a hard and sudden summer rain at night offered tremendous relief, yet wasn’t salvation. I miss being alone in that dark, quiet and unafraid, crickets cicadas owls all singing about it out there, commotion like a broken music box, rolling on slowly.
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