june 17, 1994... or thereabouts

june 4th... i put the children in their winter coats to take them to school this morning.  i don't know what the temperature was.  it felt cold.  maybe because i was sick, but i woke up feeling alright and in need of no tylenol, had no fever.  so i don't think it was any sort of self-preservation thing.  i think it really was just cold enough this morning that they were more comfortable in their winter coats than they would have been out of them.

getting them there and riding back in that cold, felt like pushing it enough.  plus henry got us up early.  before six anyway.  so i decided not to go to danish class today.  i went back home and got into bed, under the covers.  my nose stayed cold for a long time and i thought about how william had complained this morning, when he was still in his pajamas, that he was cold.  will i really have to turn a radiator back on?  on june 4th?

i woke up feeling worse than when i'd lain down.  i took some ibuprofen, warmed up some lunch, ate, took a shower, and folded laundry until the achiness went away, and then went to pick up the guys.
then we had a good afternoon playing around the house.

...trying to listen to the radio about the recall election i will not be able to vote in, over all of the toy noise.  i hear a little news blurb about the nba playoffs. and for some reason, nba playoffs are tied in my mind to being 15 years old, going with my mom one summer afternoon to drive my little sister to a french-class weekend camp in wisconsin.  we lived in illinois at the time.  stopping on the way home to eat dinner at some restaurant attached to a gas station.  arriving home before the sun had fully set, to a muggy evening... and probably hoping to catch the bulls in some playoff game.  or maybe not.  i look back because for some reason the o.j. simpson freeway chase is also tied to that memory, and i find that the bulls were already out of the playoffs by that night in 1994... which i see now is the day before i turned 15.  but maybe i have three separate memories rolled into one, because i also remember being able to drive during part of that trip, but i wouldn't have had my permit yet.

ah memories.  you think you remember and then you check the facts.  i guess what's most poignant to me now is the mugginess.  here, at 9:45, the sun is in roughly the same position as it was when we pulled back into the driveway that evening (whatever evening it was), but the air was humid.  the heat stayed on even as the sun went down.  it was june.  it was summery, if not yet technically summer.  and today, in denmark, it is june and i put my kids in their winter coats to take them to school.  i am missing those muggy midwest evenings.  i have a feeling i will miss them all summer, which will technically begin later this month, even if it is not summery here, the way i know summery to feel.

last week, someone at greg's lab asked greg's boss if he'd "enjoyed his summer."  it was relayed to me as a joke, but then greg says that everyone is saying that this, and not those other days, the days when i hemmed and hawed and finally took my summer clothing out of storage, is what the rest of summer will be like.  and i'm okay with it until i hear a little news blurb about the nba playoffs and i'm reminded about the feel of some june evening eighteen years ago and suddenly it doesn't feel like it's enough to have nearly endless sun, and trees with all of their green leaves, and blooming poppies, when you have to wear mittens and winter coats to enjoy them.

i really want to feel a little warmth, a little mugginess, on a summer evening in the midwest.  who knows.  maybe things will surprise us here.  it's only spring after all.  too soon to be reflecting on this year's summer, even if it was only a joke.

may 31, 2007