I like to sit by the river on a bench near the site of the old YMCA. Once a week? Once a month? It’s hard to say exactly; there’s no particular time. This month, the water was still and low, and the Canadian smoke clouded my view from the north bank looking southeast at one tree in particular, with whom I share a regular greeting. In the haze and the heat that have often made this summer uncomfortable, I am sadly resigned in my view that since we’ve given up on fixing things, our memories might provide our most distinct vision.
Earlier this summer, before the smoke arrived, our 40-year-old air conditioner developed a problem that could be fixed and then couldn’t be fixed so my partner and I spent a few days the week before Independence Day reliving something about our lives together: at the end of a really hot day, shade and a breeze.
Shade and a breeze reminded me how much I like the person with whom I also share the fan in front of the window blowing night air across our splayed bodies in bed. I need to think more about the elevated consciousness of fresh air. I don’t know if that is particular to us. I do know that giving in to the need for artificial air is something we avoid until we think we can’t stand the heat or the cold any longer.
I’ve this summer come across a photo of a day when Judy and I went for a walk in the cool woods near Bloomington 50 years ago. The look that she is giving me: I never had a chance. How could I not fall fearlessly in love with the girl whose eyes told a story that must have begun when time began, when we were cosmic dust roommates at the Big Bang Motel. Fifty planet Earth years is nothing compared to that. So, you see, fifty years later, it’s the same look in the same air.
I suppose a return to the days of fans and open windows, and a picture, is all I need, a breeze in the shade to remind me of an original belonging.
While the air conditioning was out, the weather changed from tropical to temperate for a couple of days this month and watching the yellow finches and the bees in the flowers and the grasses became blissful. Sitting on the porch in the cool summer breeze that follows a hot day I thought about many visits to my grandparents’ farm in the months when school was out. My mom’s folks, I mean, not the ones I’ve been writing about mostly. My present tense lean dissolved into the past tense squeak of the soft green metal lawn chair underneath the big tree between the farmhouse and the gravel road. Legs up, I’m rocking back and forth, wiping the sweat from my brow, sitting in the shade after tag with my cousins, with my back to the dust kicked up by a green Ford Falcon or an orange Case tractor cultivating weeds among the soybeans.
Had I been inside with the air-conditioning I might have been watching someone else’s imagination, someone pretending to live for a living, on a screen. That’s it; in the real air, I feel more like my life is my own.
From time to time something reminds us of a life we used to live and a life we still do and that the best part is the parts that are the same. I’m pretty fortunate: the infinite eyes, a shy smile, and the breeze.
We spent a little time over the holiday weekend at the ballpark where the South Bend minor league team plays. Red, white, and blue bunting, a home run, a triple, fireworks and happy people, it really is an impressive scene these days at Four Winds Field with a new skyline and the upper deck in progress. For the fans, losing 5-2 to the St. Louis Cardinals farm team is beside the point. At the end of a hot day, we were in the shade on the third base side with a nice breeze in our faces.
I noticed people as I do, in our communal environment, without the chaos that clouds our understanding of things these days. Happy people, proud but subdued in a midwestern way, and respectful of the space. Kids bashfully approached the team mascot for an autograph as I walked by in pursuit of a pretzel, while the team master of ceremonies and a local TV news guy gave away TVs between innings. The day after the fourth of July. America.
It was time well spent, away from the feeling that “other” people are taking away our ability to be proud. Before the smoke arrived. Outside in the clean air.
Music: “Bookends Theme”/“America” by Simon and Garfunkel
