It's another nasty, muggy day down here. I've never before wanted a summer to go to waste, even the summer I was waiting for Keith to come home from deployment. Summer in Kentucky though; I want nothing more than for it to be over, shed like wet clothing. Summer down here is like a rotten fruit, swollen, smelly and damp.
This is an irrational thought, but I keep feeling like Kentucky is making me fat. I know I could force myself to get up and go for a walk in the morning, but unless I get up before seven thirty, it's already hot and steamy. And the day time? Forget about it. And the evening? I have to wait until past eight thirty before it's even the slightest bit cooler. From eight in the morning until nine at night, that entire space of time is completely gone to waste.
Keith was out mowing the lawn yesterday, he wasn't out for more than ten minutes before he had to come back in for some water. His shirt was dripping wet with sweat. Literally. It was dripping onto the welcome mat.
He has to be careful now because once a body has had extreme heat cramps, it's much easier for it to happen again. That's what the doctor told us.
I went out to rake up the grass trimmings (just to keep an eye on him, really) and I felt leaden out there. I felt like I was breathing under water, nasty, fetid swamp water. We grew up on the edge of a swamp and sometimes, in desperation, we would jump into the swamp, despite the lurking threat of snapping turtles.
We saw them often, prehistoric looking creatures who dragged their fortified bodies up out of the swamp waters to lay their eggs in the sandy soil by the milk weeds. Offer them a stick and their jaws would clench down, vicious, sudden and intractable. If the stick was not sturdy, it would snap in two.
Despite this, on truly hot days, even the slimy, amber colored water looked appealing and my brothers and I would jump in from the reed banks, eyes shut tight. I would bring my feet up from the tempting cool depths of the channel, away from any waiting threats and float on the surface.
That's what the air here reminds me of, that warm swamp water, breeding place for mosquitoes and tadpoles, dragonflies skimming the surface in iridescent blues and greens.
I keep thinking of other summers, swimming in the lake, a cool, quiet lake. I could float on the top of the water and watch the clouds drift by in the delicious coolness of a NH summer. I remember it being muggy there too sometimes, but nothing like this.
I tell myself we won't be here forever, but that's small consolation, as we are merely moving deeper toward the unbearable Southern coast, towards Florida and Alabama. I used to just joke about the fact that I was a Yankee, but now I know it.
I miss the worn granite stone walls and deep green lawns, the pine boughs that sweep down like a royal train under the weight of snow. I want the rocky pastures and bald mountains that are really just hills compared to the Rockies. I want the short, muddy springs and the clouds of black flies, the apple orchards with their twisted roots twined deep in the steep side of a hill.
I would rather summer be merely the dream one is constantly waking up from than it be this interminable agony of sweat, stink and heat.
Two days ago the heat was broken by a massive bank of thunderstorms that were moving east across Kentucky. Where we were, the sky was a churning mass of blue gray cloud, the edges ragged by the force of the wind, dissolving and reforming before our eyes. The wind whipped the flag and bent the tomato plants back.
I brought the flag in and then the plants as well. For that night the dining room was transformed into a forest. My German Johnsons have gotten very tall, almost as tall as I am and one leaned up against the wall, its arms reaching for the clock. Pepper plants sat squat and heavy on the wooden table.
The hail I was saving them never arrived, but it must have been exciting for the plants to try out the "indoor" life style for a night. Hopefully they didn't bring any bugs in with them.
