Heat makes things strange. Makes them ripply and mirage-like. Makes them smoke and waver. Makes them melt. It makes me lethargic and yielding. Makes me cranky and weak.
Beach Jesus/Sermon at the Sea was warm and overly sunny for me and I grew so tired of squinting I turned and walked back to Sam's car two-thirds of the way through the service. He parked in the shade. I sat with the door open fanning myself and feeling sweat pool in the center of my back and underneath each ear, somehow. I took off my hearing aids and put them away.
Thirty minutes and he was back. You alright?
Good work, Sam, I tell him again in my deepest voice.
If it was good, why'd you leave?
Too hot. Now I miss the Prairie winters suddenly. Ten months of the year without sweating, as long as you can make it through eight weeks of forty degrees.
It's only warm like this for three or four weeks out of the year here.
Yes and I hate it.
And you miss driving on ice?
Fine, you win. Can we go home now? I'm going to need help moving my bed into the pool.
Let's go out for lunch first. There's a little place I found downtown that's really good.
Downtown? We won't get home until one.
Oh well.
Lochlan's home today.
Ah. I've been replaced. And so soon. He looks down with a huge comical frown.
Never. But if he doesn't have to work I want to be with him.
You really like the guy, don't you?
Naw, I'm just bored and I want to play connect the dots. He has the most freckles.
Actually I think you do.
Shhh. We don't speak of those.
But my face is covered. I've been marked by Jesus as one of the unbearable ones, a hot mess when everyone else is positively worshipping this weather instead of the things they're supposed to devote their faith to.
The Lord makes beautiful things. He smiles at me, turning on the car, turning up the air conditioning, motioning for me to close the door.
Like your Poland belt buckle?
Ha! No, I think that was made in Taiwan.
Oh. Really? Not Poland? How curious.
I know! That's part of it's charm!
