Heat

I suspect we will make new heat records this summer.  It is not a dry heat.  While I would love to live in an open-air house where the cooling breeze blows through, I am grateful for air-conditioning in weather like this.  When we got married and moved in 1995 (me from Boston, Jeff from North Dakota), I remember it was hot like this.  It*s interesting to me what certain memories are tied to, how particular experiences are wired to things like weather.  It*s interesting to me how all those experiences are wired together.

I remember the summer

Of 1995:

Newly married

Soon newly pregnant

The heat of that summer

Reminds me of now.

The heat

The stress number index

Rose

With moving trucks

From Boston,

North Dakota;

The marriage

The baby coming

Two new jobs

A third grader.

That fall I was met at the new parish door

By a large blonde woman

Arms akimbo.

She stood at the top of the steps,

Madder than two wet hens,

Asked me who I was,

What I thought I was doing there.

I remember the heat

Of that summer,

Reminds me a bit of now.

The large blonde woman died less than a year later

Quick diagnosis, then two weeks dead:

Cancer of the bile duct.

She died

Soon after our baby

Eyes wide open
Was born.

.

I remember the heat of that summer

That fall

That spring,

Reminds me a bit

Of now.