Lately the weather is the prelude to most conversations. The oppressive heat lays a blanket on the decision to go for a walk, work in the garden, visit a friend without air conditioning. Perhaps people whose days are spent in an office so well chilled they need a sweater are immune to the humidity, but for the rest of us it has been a sweaty week.
We are attentive to our chickens. I am reluctant to use the word worried, because I believe they will be alright. They do not enjoy the heat, and the twins and I spend a couple of hours each day changing water, taking them out in the early hours, maximizing shade. Once I put ice in their drinking dish. If the weather app I use is correct today is the last truly sweltering afternoon. I told them that this morning, while they were snipping at blades of grass. They made no comment.
It is still early yet and I can almost forget how awful it felt yesterday about seven thirty as we were settling them in for the night. The tasks are less pleasant with drops dripping off your forehead, and mosquitoes nipping at your legs. But we finished and scurried inside to reward ourselves with ice cream. Tonight there will be rain and relief.
I visited a friend who is in a predicament. Her life was already brimming with the tasks around three small children. But when she hurt her foot and needed surgery the difficult was promoted to impossible. Her physician instructed her to stay off it and get plenty of rest. She needed help.
The twins and I arrived with fruits and vegetables, which we arranged in bowls within reach of the invalid and her brood. We picked up toys, vacuumed, washed dishes, made a salad for dinner, and ran a load of clothes. Because there were three of us and all our limbs are in a cooperative state it was not stressful. The children were happy to have fresh faces to look at, and new voices to answer their incessant questions.
On the way home I told the twins the story which came at an earlier point in Odhner history than their arrival. Back when we had four children John and I moved from Albuquerque to California, and as fate would have it my appendix chose that particular moment in time to malfunction. John was forced to peel sleeping children out of their soft motel beds and race to the hospital. I was anesthetized, put under the knife and sent to a cool recovery room. John had the care of four children, one of whom was a nursling. When I was finally discharged the physician, who apparently went to the same medical school as my friend's doctor, told me to stay off my feet and get plenty of rest.
There is no denying that hot days are hot, injured feet are an inconvenience. Marriages too suffer from steamy tempers and lame periods. But in my brief life I have come to believe the rain will come.
