It’s the middle of November and I have thrown open all the sash windows to catch a breeze through this oven-warm apartment of mine. I know global warming is being strongly disputed by some scientists, so I won’t attempt to throw my hat into the ring on such a hot topic, but I will say I have never been warmer in Fall. I recall several years ago, wandering the quaint and charming, fairy light-bedecked Union Street below, at dusk, stuffing my hands into my pockets for relief from the wet, chilled air. Yet this year, I haven’t even unpacked the space heaters I invested in from Home Depot this year in a vow to stay warm. This year it is definitely warmer, and this week’s heat wave, and all the arm-baring tops and open windows that have gone along with is, has made it all the more impossible to ignore.
I am African, in blood and in mind. Recently, I discovered that for many in the world this translates into the assumption that I can stand incredible heat. Firstly, Africa has a more predictable, but not necessarily hotter climate, than other places in the world. Sure, we have scorching deserts and toasted plains, but so does America. Mostly, in cities like Cape Town and Dar Es Salaam, the difference is that you know you have 5 months of warm days and nights, and 5 months of cold. It’s just a given, and we might as well pack away our sweaters and scarves for the season. I have heard that in Kansas, one must be prepared for a tornado in the summer months, June brings tropical storms to Florida, and San Franciscans curse the July fog. This, for me, is the difference.
In fact, the hottest places I have been fall onto the Asian portion of the globe. I can recall crawling out of the soaked sheets at 4am in India, to rouse the boatmen for a dawn sail on the Ganges before the heat took over the city by sunrise, and we would retreat back into the cool darkness of our hotel room, like slugs, for most of the day. In Hoi An, we rented a moped to whip up some wind that would cool our skin. And to explore, as the stifling heat disspated any plans of strolling the alleys crowded with silk bloody lanterns.
I was born in March, which is the dregs of summer where I come from, and I think it touched my soul, birthing a yearning for the last days of golden happiness, for ever. There is always a part of me, like a sunflower, that always wants more sun on my face. I get actual sick happiness from liquid sunshine, and I horde it secretly and shamefully like a housewife collecting shoes.
Unfortunately, San Francisco is hardly warm, and when we do get sunshiney days, we never know how long they will last. It is a daredevil move setting out for an afternoon without layers, and summer melts into winter, which evaporates just as quickly into another seasonal cousin. This incestuous changing of the seasons leaves us all wondering if we are the butt of some heavenly joke.
So for now, I swop weather remarks, like a purple rinse in the old age home, with my friends around the world on that wonderful Facebook-go-ride, smiling inwardly when we Californians yet again steal the sun from another deserving corner of the world.
