Dear God, It's Hot...

That's a prayer. Or more accurately, a complaint. Hey, Big Guy, could you turn it down a bit?

104.

In the shade.

The shade cooks like a restless spirit. Vibrates, really. Afraid to peer around the back of the house, and catch a face full of fire. So it hides, back there, waiting for night.

The wife's job died today. Well, she was 95, so she was way past her sell-by date, but still, it is both a sad thing, and an impact upon our income. Ours is a settled pool, we up to our noses in it, and when the Devil goes water-skiing, well...

I told her to have faith, but as religious as she is, there lies her struggle. I sometimes...okay, all the time, think that our financial struggle is meant to hone her faith, as I have no problem with it.

Oh, I can kvetch with the best of them, but my first impulse at disaster is to throw myself into my Father's arms, and hers is to fret, and look to herself for the solution.

Sometimes, I have to sit on her. Her eyes roll, like a calf caught out in a thunderstorm, and I have to shepherd her to the Great Shepherd, and let He and His crook and His loving heart deal with her, because I cannot, for a bit, until He sends her back, and I can comfort her.

And Dear Lord, it is hot. I know, almost with compleat certainty, how far away from me that Sun is, and yet I could swear it has snuck up recently on its fiery, tippy toes, and is fanning its robe at me, so as to increase the heat.

Times of other heat crowd my nearly full memory. Sitting in an Oklahoma beer hall, listening to the cooler motors' labor, the squeak squeak squeak of the fan belts as they work to keep the beer tepid, the squeal of the bearing in the fan over the far pool table, going bad, but still whacking the fat, thick air into hot slices, to settle over us like warm dough.

Crouching up in the rocks, the valley below a shimmering pool of boiled air, watching in awe as an A-10 Warthog comes in on a gun run, the main gun roaring like a mad animal, smoke pouring back over the cockpit, seeming to hang there in the air from the recoil alone, and then the whapwhapwhap crackle of the rounds spacking in.

Lolling on the hot steel of an LSAT, listening to the motors grind as we head to shore, hearing the pop of mortars in the distance, feeling the spray of the ocean licking up at me like a very sensuous dead woman's tongue, me there, chafing in my kapok.

Or me there, quivering on my cane, watching the box of my Beloved lower into the ground, the wind whipping at my pants, and trying to freeze my tears.

Ahhhh, see what can happen when you summon? I was looking for a cold day, and I found one, one where my heart was as cold as ice, at the edge of a bitter winter, on the worst day of my life.

Be careful what you wish for...


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