The Last Word On Nothing

A letter to myself, to be read in spring of 2017, when it starts getting hot again.

Dear Helen:

I know. The weather report is scary. It’s going to be in the 80s this week. Could be 85 by Friday. It means the worst: Summer. Is. Coming.

Yeah, I know. Summer is the worst. Washington, D.C. does not do summer gracefully. Washington, D.C. does summer sweatily, grumpily, heat-island-ly. Your apartment in particular does summer like a solar oven, and yeah, the air conditioning pretty much has to run from March to October without a break. Once you even had to run it on Christmas Day, but that was because you insisted on making a pot roast even though it was sunny and over 40℉.

But here’s the thing: Summer is survivable.

No, really! I swear! You can survive it. And one of these years I bet you’ll even survive it without your usual August existential crisis. (Why am I here? What am I doing? What is life for if all I’m ever going to do is sit inside this apartment being sad because it’s hot and sunny?)

So here you go. While I, September 2016 Helen, am feeling happy about the approach of fall, here are some survival techniques to try in summer of 2017.

1. Keep going outside. You don’t have to walk six miles to enjoy the outdoors. You can take a blanket and a drink to the patch of grass across the street and draw a tree or read a book or something.

2. Walk home from work. It’s ok to be super sweaty when you get home. Then you just take a shower. This does require (1) taking sneakers to work and (2) being willing to wear the sneakers with whatever clothes you wore to work that day, but I think you can handle it. You get to commune with way more plants that way.

3. Go somewhere else. Berlin is lovely in the summer – 50s and rainy. You have friends with guest rooms in Michigan, Vermont, Colorado, Seattle…all much more pleasant in summer than D.C.

4. Go outside. A 6-mile walk on concrete with no shade is a lot more fun in February, yeah. But how about kayaking? You love kayaking.

5. Go outside. Something about sitting indoors in air conditioning that is working as hard as it can to barely hold the temperature in the high 70s makes the outside seem even worse than it is. It’s never as bad as you think it is. Even when it’s really bad, you can survive.

6. Go outside. Wolf Trap is kind of nice, if you don’t have to be anywhere the next day and can put up with the eternity it takes to get out of the parking lot.

7. Wear dresses. Life is better if you never have to put on pants.

8. Go outside after dark. Yeah, it’s still just as humid, but when the sun is out, life isn’t quite so terrible. Especially if you remember mosquito repellent.

9. Sometimes it’s ok not to go outside. Sometimes your intestines are acting up and you’re tired and the outdoors feels like a hot, wet sponge. And then it’s ok to lie on the couch all day and watch Netflix.

10. Fall will come again. One day, there might even be snow! Until then, there is…the outside.

Love,

Helen

art and photo: by me, in Michigan