I want to wear long sleeves again--not because of fashion really, but because it is time for the higher than usual temperatures to end. One day in late May I was turning on the heated seats in my car, and the next day I was blasting the air conditioning. Although last winter was comparatively mild, it was, well, still winter.
Given everything that is going on--the weather, politics, my car problems--I think there may just be some truth to the observation that maybe, just maybe, David Bowie was somehow making sure things worked at least a little better, and since he has left us, things have gone slightly askew. With him gone and with whatever unifying cosmic force he might have been now absent, here we are, sweltering away in what used to be a temperate zone.
Makes as much sense as any other explanation I have heard. (Global warming explains only the weather.)
I want the weather to cool off into fall temperatures because things seem more possible when the weather is cooler, if only because then I do not feel flattened by the heat. I want to feel like going for a walk and to the gym again. (The gym I had been going to has limited AC which apparently only kept the place cool in the very early morning.) I want the temperatures to cool off because I want to feel like dancing and singing.
This year has been the inaugural year of the Family Summer Concert Series. (My niece came up with the title and the idea that we do this once a year. Good idea!) I have been saying for several years that I am in the process of very slowly cleaning out. I don't need more stuff. More than that, especially now that I have time--retirement is the ultimate flextime--experiences seem much more important than possessions. And beyond that, there is something to be said for shared experiences.
On this score, (no pun intended), music works. Attending a concert does requires some planning and coordinating, some attention to logistics ("So who's going to drive?"), and once on the road, there is conversation, food and drink. There's singing along with the music, with usually not a lot of conversation except "Who's Bob Weir?" after Paul McCartney brought him on stage for "Hi, Hi, Hi". My niece asked me that, and ten minutes later I asked her who Rob Gronkowski was as he was brought on stage as well. (Answer: A Patriot. Later my brother explained, "He catches the ball and then basically runs over people." Gronk apparently had connections to someone on Sir Paul's staff; Weir had played at Fenway the night before.)
So this year with family members I have seen Tedeschi Trucks Band, Paul McCartney, and James Taylor and Jackson Browne, the last three at Fenway Park. Don Henley of The Eagles will be next and he will be followed by Buddy Guy. Then this season pretty much ends.
My house does not have air conditioning but it is insulated and does have new windows and doors that do a much better job keeping out cold drafts in the winter and hot air in the summer than it did in years past. But even so, this summer has been a sauna. I have three oscillating fans downstairs and one upstairs for a house that has a footprint of maybe twenty-five by twenty-five feet. But it has still been hot.
The heat has reduced my productivity, my get-up-and-go. My general energy level. I get up, shower, eat, and then want to sit in the shade or go back to bed. (When I lived in the tropics, I would have taken to the opium pipe had there been one, if only to escape the heat.) For a couple months my retirement work ethic--not manic, not driven, just busy enough--has been on hold. Steamed out. Poached.
But last week we had a cooler day--a day well under eighty degrees--and, among other activities, I got myself to the top end of a mop and of a vacuum cleaner. All of a sudden it was possible to breathe again. I felt as if I were not living in hot broth. I could think about moving and doing things.
For most of my life I have been fortunate enough to have a house of my own, one that now, even with my donations to Salvation Army, still has a lot of books and photos of places I have been. Hence there is dust even after I dust. I have never been much of a homemaker. The housekeeping I do tends to be done in spurts: no day-long marathon, but the bathroom one day, the kitchen another. That said, my philosophy is that it all needs to be clean enough. I do not live in a clinic. I do live with three cats who have been shedding machines in the heat.
With the cooler weather, the temperature was no excuse to stall. I swept up the few pieces of dry cat food outside the bowl on the kitchen floor and then vacuumed and got out the mop and bucket.
Music helped. I still have CDs, and I can blast the music on my iPhone through a Bluetooth speaker. The windows were open, and although I live on a corner and have more yard than floor, mine is a very quiet neighborhood. So I could play the music only so loudly.
I moved the chair, the cat bowls, the three-legged stools in the corner. The playlist--my setlist--started with Paul McCartney. "One, two, three, fah!" and "I Saw Her Standing There" was off. "How could I dance with a-nother?/ And I saw her standing there." And then the chang of the guitar that begins "A Hard Day's Night" followed by "It's been a hard day's night/And I've been working like a dog..." I sang along to the na-na-na-na's of "Hey Jude", and, truth be told, to the rest of the songs, too.
I was singing. Not as loudly as I might. But I was singing. Although I was someone whom the music teacher told not to sing loudly at all in elementary school music class (I was enthusiastic), I like to sing. (Using earbuds is not the same as singing along to music in the air. It just isn't.) The car trips to see my family the day before we go on the Family Concert Series featured Sandy's Car Karaoke for a good four to five hours over the hills of Vermont into New Hampshire. (I kept the windows closed, the AC cranked.) If there were a summer fantasy camp, even just a few days, for people who wanted to be backup singers, I might consider attending. I mean, who doesn't want to sing backup with Aretha Franklin?
Not only was I singing along, but I was mopping. Mopping and slopping. Later I would text a friend to ask if there were ever an I Love Lucy scene where she mops and sings; in some ways this just felt that way. I moved a couple more pieces of furniture, slopped more soapy water. And then more water. I realized I should have rolled up my crops a little. My flipflops were wet. Oh well.
A few more songs, including "Sweet Baby James," and I remembered how the crowd went nuts cheering when James Taylor sang the line "from Stockbridge to Boston" at Fenway. I mopped away and tried to see if any of the already-mopped parts were drying. Maybe a little.
By the time "Up on the Roof", a nice slowish song, came on, I was hitting my musical stride. I sang along a little more loudly. "On the roof, that's the only place I know/Where you just have to wish to make it soooooo". I was once again enthusiastic.
"Up on the rooof/ Up on the roo-oof/ Up on the roo-oooof" for a big finish.
Come fall, I can close the windows and sing. Really sing.
Bring on the fall.
Copyright Sandra Engel
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