It’s been hot here. It’s the kind of heavy, thick heat that presses in against your chest and leaves your lungs heaving against the moisture in the air. It’s the kind of heat that envelops your body the moment you step outside, your skin covered at once in a thin sheen of sweat that drips from your eyebrows and the backs of your knees. It’s the kind of heat that causes you to stand at the entrance of a book store, light headed and bewildered, wondering why the automatic door won’t open. Then an older gentleman wearing small shorts much too immodest for his bulky, hairy frame steps in front of you and pushes open the door.

I have an embarrassingly low tolerance for this kind of weather. The wading pool calls to my children constantly; they live in their bathing suits during the summer and beg to be outdoors no matter what the thermometer says, and I must supervise. While they splash and giggle and make a general ruckus, I lay flat on my back beneath the small circle of our beach umbrella, the only shade our backyard has to offer. Sweating and panting, I lay as still as I can and pray desperately for a breeze. Inevitably the girls need me for something, and I have to get up to fetch the ball that bounced over the fence or kiss a bruised elbow. But the heat drugs me, making my feet too heavy and my head spin. Jane Austen said it better than I ever could:

“What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.”