马蒂·阿通/Marti Attoun
“No air conditioning?How can you sleep?”a friend asks, horrified. I've just revealed that my family has decided to shut the air conditioner off and trim our electric bill.
“Nobody opens a window, day or night,”warns another friend, whose windows have been painted shut for a decade.“This is the 90s. It's not safe.”
On this first night of our cost-cutting adventure, it's only 85 degrees. We're not going to suffer, but the three kids grumble anyway. They've grown up in 72-degree comfort, insulated from the world outside.
“How do you open these windows?”my husband asks. Jiggling the metal tabs, he finally releases one. A potpourri of bug bodies decorates the sills. As we spring the windows one by one, the night noises howl outside-and in.
“It's too hot to sleep,”my 13-year-old daughter moans.
“I'm about to die from this heat,”her brother hollers down the hall.
“Just try it tonight,”I tell them.
In truth I'm too tired to argue for long. I'm exhausted after attending Grandma's estate auction. I toted home her oval tin bathtub and the chair I once stood on like a big shot behind the counter of her store.
My face is sweaty, but I lie quietly listening to the cricket choirs outside that remind me of childhood. The neighbor's dog howls. Probably a trespassing squirrel. It's been years since I've taken the time to really listen to the night.
I think about Grandma, who lived to 92 and still supervised Mom's gardening until just a few weeks before she died. And then, I'm back there at her house in the summer heat of my childhood. I move my pillow to the foot of Grandma's bed and angle my face toward the open window. I flip the pillow, hunting for the cooler side.
Grandma sees me thrashing.“If you'll just watch for the breeze,”she says,“you'll cool off and fall asleep.”