Operant Air Conditioning

The A/C felt like cheating.

Icy breath danced out of the car vent in the front seat. Enough that my hair wafted.

That up-close and personal feel was that we never reached us in the backseat as kids.

I took a deep breath of the chilled air and stared at the baking sauna outside the bubble. The friends’ road trip was exactly what I needed, I told myself again.

I had never been on a vacation with friends. Only family crammed into the minivan. Too many kids to keep track of for two parents. As globs of tacky sweat sidled down your collarbone and the smell of petrol and tepid coffee filled your eyes along with the red droll of brake lights of another traffic jam. Nothing to do but daydream out the window.

At the wheel, Kai blasted the air like he had no qualms, no bills to pay. Like the car was built to dispense artificial air like a mobile ventilator. Behind mirrored sunglasses he tapped along to the radio down easy highway express. He smiled like he had all the time in the world.

In the break seat, Yuki and Dale joked about passing scenery.

Kai promised adventure, An itinerary. An entire week. Something that was never thought of on my family vacations. A drop off at Grandma’s.

Summer was the worst season. That was a hill I would die on. And in the ever-present June-August heat, it was more than likely. Summer was too slow and stifling. Nothing to do. Everyone was away.

As sun beat down, everyone scrambled inside to the boob tube within moments. Noticing the haze of the sun shimmy across the bowed glass screen as a mirage during commercials. Turning up the volume to be heard over grandma’s geriatric fan. Energy sapped out of our bones like melting ice pops, sticky, tacking us to the hardwood floor panting like dogs. Smothering around an ancient fan throbbing weakly in the corner.

Grandpa circling like a shark, eyeing the thermostat like a priceless treasure. A fragile meringue posed to disintegrate at the lightest touch. As if I would even know how. The device looked christened by Graham Bell.

Inside the mobile ice box, we reached a consensus for the next pitstop. At the gas station and grocery store we picked up snacks. Another novelty. “We have food at home” was permanent tinnitus in my ear.

The cold air of the car was a magnificent fortification across the scorching parking lot that I felt nothing. No, I felt elated, invincible.

More cool icy air greeted us inside with a ding of the door.

We filled the cooler with drooping, laden bags of ice. Stocked it with ice cream, alongside the weeks’ worth of frozen blocks of choice meats, and crisp vegetables made out of icicles. Ice crystals like manna.

Iced coffees to go. Dripping with condensation. Clouded and peaked with whipped cream. Iced tea drowning a lemon in its tawny arctic waters.

The force field of freezing carried us back into the van. We laughed about previous vacations trips to Alaska. Snow peaked mountains of Colorado.

Kai talked about his favorite ice cream parlor in town. Roller skates on marbled polished floors. Milkshakes as thick as condensation loaded clouds.

Grandma was only comfortable when she was uncomfortable. Sitting at the kitchen table, her hand fan flipping constantly, drinking glass after glass of ice water before it was socially acceptable to crack open the chardonnay.

Forced outside to give her a semblance of peace, the air was thick and rancid. So humid it was like breathing in the face of someone with halitosis.

The constant smell and presence of sweat was a second skin. The salt collecting in the eyebrows, down the eyes, around the ears. Caking deodorant under the arms.

I wondered if it was possible to drown in your own sweat. To be smothered in the nostrils. Eyes burning.

The cold desert moon guided us in as we rolled into the cottage in the dead of night. I opened my eyes.

Luggage hit the floor, the cooler hefted to the fridge, barren and gleaming soon loaded immeasurably for us.

At night the cottage was luxurious. A five-star hotel could not have accommodated better. Sleeping cemented on top of linen sheets. They breathed better than my asthmatic days.

The one thing about growing up without central air was learning to lie perfectly still.

In the basement as I laid on the pullout coat panting like a dog.

“It only gets hot a few days a year around here,” Grandma would shrug as she commented once again on my dark circles and daytime lethargy.

Skin scorched away my soul as I laid in the basement cot. I dreamed piled on the sunscreen as the rays decimated the city. I had no sunglasses.

In the cottage’s sprawling lawn overlooking the lake we ran playing games, like our shoes were the only things burning. Like we had energy to spare.

Leaps off the dock into the lake fully clothed.

At the evening campfire Kai came over. A crisp beer bottle sliding effortlessly into a koozie.

Back home, Mom never touched the oven . We made do heating up soup in the microwave. More often than not it was the cereal kind. Her industrial bottles of Chardonnay taking the milk’s coveted space in the fridge. Dad was usually away at conferences. Probably enjoying room service and ice buckets.

The week’s final night ended with, of all things, homemade pizza. Adding flames to the fire of the season but it cast no amber glow that wasn’t welcome. Proverbial sleeves rolled up. Spicy meat. Jalapenos danced onto the bed of cheese Laughter as a can of pineapple was popped open and eaten with fingers dangling high above head height.

The soothing balm to heal the sunburn of the past. The real protection from the summer heat was the friendship and memories of soothing new memories and promising something better than years past.

A far cry from the swelter I was accustomed to, the novelty wasn’t just the air conditioning. I found my heart and soul warmed with my friends and the promise of new memories circumventing with the waft of the fan.