Monday morning our little family was headed to daycare. The heat was already making us all sticky, and as I turned out onto the main road near our house the air-conditioning blasted in my face. I was almost cold with it and I thought about whether the boys in the back were getting enough cool air.
They have vents overhead in the new vehicle, so I didn't really think about it too much.
Then, I was instantly taken back to another hot, sticky summer when I was a little kid in the back of my mom's Ford Tempo. It was a Tuesday. I know that because we'd just come from Tuesday's Ladies Group Bible Study. My aunts and cousins were there. We were all headed to town to buy craft supplies for some upcoming craft sale. The windows were up.
My mom was so proud of that new, used car. It was the biggest lemon you could ever imagine. The car broke down literally the same day my dad bought it. He drove it up the Three Mile Hill in Acme, Pennsylvania, and it died, right there in the setting sun at my grandma's house. I will never forget the slew of words that slipped out my dad's mouth as he looked into the dark, smoking abyss where the motor lived.
I don't remember exactly when the car was fixed, but it had been, and my mom was ready to take as many people as possible in it to try out the air-conditioning.
My mom, my grandma and at least one or two little ones were lodged together in the front seat and it seemed the entirety of the cousin-class were in the back. I imagine there were probably two adults and three or four little kids back there, but at the time, it felt like three adults and 9 children lodged in there. Like steerage on the Titanic.
It was fine going to town. We weren't hot yet. My mom continued to promise over the deep red of the Tempo seats that the air-conditioning was getting started and soon everyone would be cool.
"We're getting cool up here," she'd say. "You feel air back there yet?"
Maybe? A wisp or two of a breeze from between the seats?
"It'll be so cool in here soon," she'd say to us and herself.
By the time we'd reached the store parking lot, we knew something was up. Everyone was hot, but my mom refused to let us roll down the windows.
"We're getting air up here," she'd say. "Are yinz getting air back there? It'll be cool soon. Just wait."
For some reason we spent an inordinate amount of time waiting for everyone to get ready to go into the store. This happened a lot growing up. Like we were always winding up to go into the store. Planning to. Almost going. But something or someone was holding back. A misplaced receipt. A missing wallet. A baby that needed their shoe. So we sweated inside that red box of a Ford for at least 20 minutes. You think no air-conditioning is bad in a moving vehicle? Try an idling one. By the time we got out, my cousins and I literally had to peel ourselves off of each other, our sticky thighs pasted together in the heat.
My mom stayed cheerful. Chipper. She'd felt a bit of the blessed Freon and it was icing her brain. The kids in the back were like gum left in the sun -- touch us and you'd know there was a mess.
I don't remember the particulars of that afternoon, but I do remember piling in there at least two more times between stores, my legs actually chafing in the heat. She repeated it every time we got in: "Yinz getting air yet?"
No, Mom. But -- and this is what I wish I would have known then -- I'll love you more than you know one day in July, many years from now, as I sit in an air-conditioned jetliner of a van in the front seat, blasted with Freon, telling my husband the story through snorts of laughter.
"Yinz getting air yet?"
Yeah, Mom. I finally did. And it's glorious.
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