air

My parents have chosen to not have air conditioning. They have chosen instead to use our big attic fan, and open the windows at night and shut the house in the day. They have chosen to plant lots of trees that mostly shade the house all day.

I used to hate not having air conditioning. I waited for the day when I could get my own place and have it. It gets really hot in the evening, and at night, and some nights it never cools down much so the house is too warm all day. Little bugs come through the screens, Some days, cooling down is impossible. Some nights, we lay sweating on top of our sheets and wait for the temperature to hit 80 or 75, or for a breeze. The humidity seeps in, nothing dries, no sweat stays away.

But I've grown to love our natural air. I imagine the old days, when my house was young. (built in 1906, we think.) I imagine the lives of those in Africa, the Middle East, India, the places where people don't have big buildings with mechanized cold air circulation. Our natural air connects me somehow to those people. To most people. Night here, sitting, sweating in my room, the fan sucking warm air out and the trees pushing cool air in, and somewhere it is day, and hot. Someone is walking, someone is clinging to shade. The dogs retreat into the shadows, can't you see it? We're connected, somehow, through the air.

I have grown to love it. The smell of sweat, the stickiness, just from living. The smell of honeysuckle. The preciousness of a breeze. The sounds of insects and leaves. Sitting at night next to an open window. Drinking water all day. Sitting outside after dark, soaking in the cool. The sound of rain. The simplicity of it. The remembering, the imagining, the connecting.