It’s the time of year in Alabama where when the temperature tops out at only ninety degrees we feel like it’s a crisp fall day. The mercury is so high so often that ninety degrees feels like a cool breeze, and right now, the weather report online says the “feels like” temperature is one hundred twelve, a full twenty degrees higher than the actual temperature due to the humidity, and it will go higher. It’s days like this that I wonder why I live here. I beg for clouds and rain.
As awful as it is out there, it’s uncomfortable inside, too. Each day I’m on the losing side of a battle over the thermostat. My wife and daughter are wearing sweatshirts. They like it cool, so they drop the temperature to a degree that makes wearing sweatshirts in August comfortable. Me? I complain. “Maybe we can raise the temperature a bit,” I say, “and save some money and take off the sweatshirts. It’s August, after all.” There’s no budge. Then my wife assures me I have no idea what she’s going through, and she needs it cold and to go find a sweatshirt. I’ve learned to stay quiet about other’s unverifiable discomforts, only to trust that they’re awful and that they’re real. Life is safer that way. Meanwhile, Alabama Power is rolling around in bathtubs filled with the money we’re paying for the air conditioners to operate non-stop. They struggle all day long to keep up.
Which brings me back to the empty nest topic I’ve been focused on lately. In about one week there will be only two of us in this house that has held six of us for twenty years. There are unused rooms now, and I predict that in a short amount of time my wife and I will have settled in different sections of the house to spend our days. Hers on the frigid side of the house where her air conditioner is set to arctic and mine where I can comfortably work and the air conditioner is set on temperate or normal or sane. We’ll visit in the kitchen when we eat, otherwise we’ll text and call across the house from our preferred climates. Once fall comes, we’ll once again share living quarters as there are both outside and inside temperatures in the fall that we can agree to, and we are both drawn to fires in the fireplace, even if takes leaving doors and windows open to make it cool enough inside to warrant the one.
This temperature battle has been replayed in houses and amongst couples forever. It probably started in Eden, though my memory of that story is fuzzy. I think Satan led her to the tree of good and evil and showed her the thermostat. She kept it a secret, knowing as soon as Adam found it, things may get bad, and he did. I’m convinced a line cut from Gensis is Adam saying, “Wait, so Eden doesn’t have to be this cold?” and Eve snapping back, “Don’t you touch that thing! Go put on a sweatshirt.”
I’m Cam Marston, just trying to Keep it Real.
