What goes around is useful

If you came up back in the stone age, as I did, generally "it was what it was". Cold, put on a sweater or two. Hot, take it off, including the shoes. Bored? Find a book or get up a ball game. I wonder if I even had the concept of "bored" as a state of being worthy of mention to my parents. We were so imbued with the concept of being children out of sight that I nearly died the time I felt something was not worth mentioning to my parents. So did my sister, here eating apples with neighborhood buddies.

By the time I had children, in the sixties, the little tikes were fomenting the concept of feelings and even rights. Now it was OK to say you were cold and be directed to the location of your sweater, or call out at midnight, "Mommy, I'm sick!", and vomit in the door way to the hall, not the bathroom toilet. My dad, my girls right and three more of his grands left.

The grands came along starting in the early nineties. Now an interesting dichotomy. I have six grandchildren, and was directly involved in twelve or thirteen years of half of them. Half were raised as were their parents, and half were raised by their parents. The finest example I have of that is the several yards of mulch my daughter had unloaded in her drive. To move it to designated areas she enlisted what else? Children.

Beth, my oldest, had watched the progress of Hamilton, Emily and Laura in turning over my front garden at the old house from a weed patch to a charming little English Cottage Garden. Laura was available the weekend of the mulch, and was enlisted to help. I guess she was eleven or twelve, so Caroline would have been tenish. Laura just kept shoveling and moving mulch; Caroline leaned on her shovel and complained it was too much work.

Beth called yesterday to tell me a story. She lives in an old house in one of the many ethnic enclaves in Cleveland. I've written of her wonderful, screened front porch and the Morris chairs for lying back and admiring the air and the view. She bought the house more than twenty five years ago, patching together grants for single working women with a credit union loan, and she was a homeowner!

She wanted to tell me the renovation of the old HVAC unit was complete. It had, of course, occurred over the hottest week days of the year to date. Cleveland was mid nineties much of last weekend and this week, until it broke overnight, for both of us. She is the only one out and about, going to work these last three months. Her husband, her son and her daughter each have assumed one floor to carry on, as students and as a banker. She was more than happy to daily escape.

The three left at home were equally happy, comfortable in the enclave each had carved out to carry on. Until the heat hit. Mom returned home Monday night to some hot, grumpy tenants. Tuesday was even worse. "I'm hot! I'm hotter! When will the A/C be on again? Mom, this is awful!"

"And you know what I told them? Hot is a state of mind!"

I hope you heard yourself saying that to a child of yours, back in the day we all lived in brand new developments, and were busy putting in grass and flower beds. No family on my street had air. It was why we went to the mall. Why, as kids, we went to the movies. Why my grandparents had a cottage on Lake Erie. Why I told my girls, "Hot is a state of mind."

Mom, Uncle Hank and friends at the Sheffield Lake cottage, July 4, 1932