Moxie Mom On Life and Kids

MOXIE MOM on Life & Kids

Silence and Heat

That deafening silence of last week is over. It’s been over for a few days, actually, as Ty came home from Sequim on Friday (but having one kid seems so easy and quiet). Yesterday afternoon, Leah came home from Camp Orkila, exhausted, croaky-voiced from too much singing and cheering, and appreciative of home (I’m thinking I’ll be sending her away every summer just so I can bask in her pleasure—it was really quite cute). Thus we begin the fragmented, multiple-way conversations of family life again. I like it. (But those few days of silence? Absolutely the best.)

And the heat. I love the heat. Love. It. My bones unlock, my muscles unfold, and my whole body feels more relaxed. Truly, I should be living in a Mediterranean climate or some such.

And yet. My love of hot temperatures feels bittersweet because with it comes worry. Worry about these temps being signs of climate change, melting poles, hurricane inducers … I worry about thirty years from now and what the world will look like for my kids. I worry about the prospect of their having kids. I worry about what all our lives will look like, but especially theirs. Does anyone else worry?

I keep telling myself we’re just setting a weather record, that 1960 had a heatwave like this one, that it’s not a trend but an anomaly. The Midwest is, according to friend, having a cooler summer than normal—that’s good, right?—and we’re having their typical temperatures. Still, I can’t bring myself to believe it. The heat feels bigger than that.

It’s not like I’m walking around with a furrow in my brow. Like I said, I love the heat, and a good dose of it helps me get through the winter feeling less desperate. But I also have this little shadow of guilt and doubt that won’t go away. And last night, at 11:00, Ty came home from a sleepover because he was “too hot and too homesick.” He’s never homesick at a friend’s house. It felt like a harbinger of things to come.

I’m thinking I’m going to be relieved when the heat abates. I never thought I’d be the person to say that.

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