heat

When we found this little house to lease in the heart of Saint Paul, I was surprised and a little wary that the price was so far below every other fenced-yard rental I had come across in my search thus far. It was closer to what might fit our two-in-school budget, but I was worried about what I might find when I went to take a look back in March. On approach, it was a nice enough little place in a nice enough looking neighborhood. The inside was charming with big windows all around and friendly colors on the walls. The kitchen was dated and without adequate counter space but had a coveted gas range an a cute pantry with shelves to the ceiling. The yard was big enough for the dogs to sprint through, and had a space already cleared for the garden that has now been taken over by the tomato apocalypse. For which I refuse to take responsibility. At any rate, I was sold on the first pass and working hard to convince the realtor to let us jump the gun and secure the place right then and there.

It wasn’t until my second-pass that I realized what was missing. It was March and a beautiful day. The radiators in the house were on, but the outside temperature held a taste of spring. It was the inevitability of summer that finally occurred to me. There was no air conditioning unit on the outside of the house; no cooling thermostat anywhere to be found. A house without air conditioning with a muggy midwestern summer on the horizon (and two cold-weather dogs) was a risk I would have to consider carefully. Oh, but the price! After a quick consultation with Pete and a few others, I was told it wasn’t so bad here in the summer. A few fans and things would be perfectly manageable, not to worry. And so we signed the papers, and signed on to what is otherwise a perfect little house, a house we would happily purchase if we knew we could stay for a few more years. And then began the anxious wait for the heat.

And heat came. Although it’s hasn’t been a particularly bad summer, it has been downright muggy at times and I have found the little house to be a furnace unless the windows are opened early and the fans used aggressively throughout the day. Coming back from a run a little too late in the morning can be a disaster, and deciding to mow the lawn at noon with nowhere to cool down has done me in more than once.

A decade ago, I spent a sultry summer in an unairconditioned room with a handful of other girls, all working on urban issues projects through college summer programs, all giddy and hopeful and sure we could enact change in a place that wanted nothing to do with us. Somehow I remember the endless sirens and the crazy neighbors in the hostel-come-commune of a building we shared, the gunshots down the street and the trash rolling along in the breeze off the lake towards the train tracks, but not the heat. My parents remember differently, claiming that the awful heat was all I could talk about when I called home on the payphone (oh, we still used payphones back then!) in the lobby.

Now that temperatures are mellowing here, the sweat isn’t slicking my skin by eight in the morning, the dogs don’t lay panting through the day, sprawled in front of fans on the living room floor. I wonder if the slow-roasting feel of the overheated days these last weeks will fade as quickly, with only visions of endlessly watering tomato plants left in their passing.