One of my favorite childhood recollections is rotating the dial on the air conditioning unit to "super cool," then closing the door to my room. About an hour later, the room was freezing. I would then crawl into bed and fall asleep. The cool air kept the mosquitos away, and guaranteed a restful sleep. I always preferred the cool dry air, a scarce resource on a Caribbean island.
Another source of escape from the heat were stories my parents told about the days when my father was stationed at Fort Richardson, Alaska. My mother always shivered as she recounted the tale, "In Winter it was below zero and when your father would go outside to take the trash out...he would go out without a jacket, just pants and a t-shirt." My father would smile, "It wasn't that cold." I would smile back at him. My mother would rub her arms trying to erase the imaginary goosebumps, and shake her head.
I also recall the cool touch of marble, and the stones ability mock the island's climate. The photograph above is of a font from a Spanish Colonial church in Puerto Rico. During a restoration decades ago, the workers were poised to throw it away, so my grandmother rescued it. Now it rests in my parent's backyard, a birdbath with a storied past, and still cool to the touch.
These days, my father is not so fond of the cold. He shrouds himself in layers during the crisp days of Autumn. The layers insulate him, and perhaps provide him with a false sense of security. He should take better care of himself, and he knows it. The days of facing sub-zero temperatures in a t-shirt are long past, but those moments of defiance live on. He shrugs off signs and symptoms of physiological frailties. He smiles at me. I smile back in order to conceal my worry. My mother rubs her arms trying to erase the imaginary goosebumps, and shakes her head.
