No A/C in Historic Heat? No Problem: That's What Great Fortune Is For
The problem is how lopsided it feels to be this lucky
Irony is a thread that weaves itself around and through, up and down the human experience. What we expect to happen comes at us opposite sometimes. What we believe to be true ends up flipped. The juxtaposition of some things begins as a mirror image, but then one turns 180 degrees.
Such was the start of my day recently. I joined my Friday morning gratitude journaling group after breakfast, and unlike most of our meetings, we started the session with a somewhat lengthy discussion on those who experience homelessness, hardship, a lack of resources, and an all-around tough life. One of us shed tears (yours truly); others were hushed and somber. Several of us lived in areas that were experiencing very hot and humid conditions, and we reflected on those who don’t have air-conditioning, or worse, who live on the streets.
Our gratitudes for that Friday embraced how fortunate all of us are.
And then, during an extreme heat wave in my area, my A/C unit took its last breath. And, later, another of the journaling group lost electricity from a storm.
I’ve been reading a book called Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder as background research for the novel I’m working on. It’s about a doctor in Boston who helped build a large mobile medical treatment unit that served the “rough sleepers”, the homeless on the streets of Boston. These were people who, for various reasons, didn’t want to go to the shelters. The author describes how, during harsh weather conditions, Dr. Jim O’Connell would slowly work to build trust and connection with these homeless people and get them to agree to go to the shelter to survive the heat or cold. If you stayed on the streets, you could die.
I might have seen that very thing the day before the worst of this heat hit northern Virginia. I watched a police officer talk to a homeless man for quite a while on the corner of the road. The officer was smiling, laughing, using approachable hand gestures. You could tell it was an extended conversation, not a get-business-done type. This man had a line of bags, carts, and other items set along the side of the road. His hair was quite disheveled, and his face looked vacant. I believe he might have been someone who rejected shelters. I can’t know for sure, but I think the officer was trying to get him to agree to sleep inside that night, to not risk his life.
I was standing in the Wegmans grocery store parking lot watching this transpire, then decided I best go about my business. I walked into the store with my wallet snug in my purse, and I began gathering up anything my heart desired with no thought as to how much I was spending. We were going to stay put this July 4th due to the weather, but at least we could celebrate with some fun food and drink. The distinction between that homeless man on the corner and the credit card I’d use without concern hadn’t hit me yet.
Later that day, our A/C went caput.
The first night, we had three fans blowing air through the house, but it wasn’t enough. I slept an hour or two at a time, then was up, hot as could be. It was “rough”, but my bed was soft, and I was safe. And my fridge was stocked with party food.
The next day the temperature went bananas. I got in one of our clean and fully functional cars with my laptop, turned up the A/C, cheerfully jammed to music thanks to my SiriusXM subscription, and headed back over to Wegmans, which has a huge, well-appointed dining area that folks use for both dining and working on their laptops.
It’s “rough” to lose your A/C at home and be forced to work on your laptop at beautiful, air-conditioned Wegmans, with any kind of food or drink your heart desires, but it’s better than nothing.
Nothing is what some people have in this extreme heat.
By the end of the day, I’d caved. I booked two nights at a hotel a few miles from my house, which was now mostly insufferable. The upstairs elicited droplets from your skin before you reached the top of the stairwell. I didn’t want to go to a hotel, but I had no choice, which is the farthest thing from the truth. It was all about choice. I could pay for the hotel, pack anything I wanted from my possession-filled hot house, drive it over in one of my clean cars, and sleep soundly, safely, in long sleeves because the A/C in my hotel room was a beast.
This sure was “rough”, and for quite a while I felt this way. I was bummed that our A/C broke. I didn’t like the idea that now we might have to buy a new system — pricey. It felt weird to be in a hotel room just down the street from my house. I’d rather have been at home. I didn’t like the disruption to my regular life. I winced at the unpredictable vibe of the whole thing.
And yet, when the unpredictability of life came in as it will, I had every opportunity to cope with it. I was hugely fortunate, and it took a real shake to my consciousness to say, “Steph, do you remember what you were talking about at the Gratitude journaling session?”
The tears came again. I played the image of that homeless man from the corner through my mind on repeat — the look of his blank face and whatever it might have indicated, his pacing in front of the police officer, all his possessions in a row on the corner of a busy intersection.
A week prior, I’d seen another homeless man on the corner with a cardboard sign, a delusional face, harsh lack of hygiene, and scrappy long-sleeves and pants in nearly 100F heat. I cried most of the way home.
And when my A/C unit goes to sleep, I think I have it bad.
I don’t. Not even close. Every day, until my last breath, it’ll be good to remember this.
Hope your summer is going well, friends.
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