Radiant Heat

This is a revision to a January post entitled "Heat". I plan to submit it to Skirt Magazine at the end of the month for publication. Please feel free to offer feedback and criticism of the piece.

We are out of firewood in our small Atlanta rental house. This means we are left to the strength of the aging heat pump to keep warm, and tonight it’s one of the rare icy winter evenings of the south. In general our house has very little to brag about; but the small fireplace blazing up with split pine might as well be a bank vault filled with gold on a cold night. Said gold is usually transported in the trunk of my car from my dad’s wood yard in Alabama. But on this night, my car is up on blocks in the driveway. I’ve been waiting weeks for my husband to replace the water pump, and now he has to wait for the temperature to raise enough to loosen the proper bolts in order to proceed. His procrastination has triggered a chain of events that has left me wrapped in resentment and my grandmother's quilt here on the bedroom watching the sheet rock cracks. Held hostage by the lukewarm air falling flat around me like the dirty laundry strewn around the room.

When I was a kid, we lived in a house whose sole source of heat was fire, actually a wood burning heater. It sounds romantic but being anchored to one cast iron box for warmth only highlighted the reality of the cold world that existed mere steps away. Most winter mornings were greeted with the sound of newspaper being crumbled into the stove while my siblings and I crowding around the front waiting for the heat to come. We’d lay our school clothes on top and circle our palms across the fabric until the balance was struck between soaking warmth and singed fibers. We’d throw them on with the quick change skill and lack of modesty of runway models; safely escaping the tight pinch of cold creeping up our shoulder blades. My father was a pulpwooder so we managed to always have an endless supply of wood, but the fire had to burn hot to reach all the corners of the house; and in order to reach my room it had to have the trajectory of an Oliver Stone inspired bullet. One person would add logs to the fire while another had to open a window to avoid heat stroke. The heat was uneven, not to mention a lot of work stoking and stacking kindling; or walking outside to collect wood. I dreamed of the affluence where comfort could be activated by the touch of a button in the steadiness and consistency of air was only an afterthought. My parent’s relationship reflected this absence of balance as well. Mornings were often met with heated arguments or pots banging in cold silence over lack of money, intrusive in-laws, or alcohol. As a family, we were trapped between the extremes of icy breath and sweltering walls.

Around junior high we built a new house. My parents used subcontractors and paid as they could or did it themselves. Occasionally someone in the extended family took pity on us and decided to pitch in with some cash to cover the cost of say, sheet rock. I remember the debates over how we would heat the new house. Daddy wanted the ritual of the wood burning stove carried over to the new abode. He saw no need to make improvements while my Mama lobbied hard for central heat and air. After years of summer afternoons spent in front of the single window air conditioner with three kids, she was ready for an upgrade. My adolescent hopes on the subject went no further than the dream of a window unit for my bedroom. The compromise ended with a wood stove in the living room which inevitably threw off the thermostat in the hall, so on most nights we had a 90 degree living room and 40 degree bedrooms along with a bigger electric bill. My dreams of our new house elevating the quality of my parent’s relationship pretty much went the way of the new heat pump. A lot of money and resources used up to get pretty much the same results; only now they couldn’t blame the thin walls or lack of storage for their hatred of one another. This hatred ossified into my adulthood and my parents never spoke through three weddings and four grandchildren.

On my wedding day the two stood stiff on either side of me in complete silence as the photographer snapped away. I wondered what the point was of capturing such an artificial moment, how a hatred of another could live so long. On my wedding night, my husband and I fed each other wedding cake under an open skylight in our snug room at the inn. We exchanged stories about the day and I when recounted my moment with my parents, he reached for me and held tight for a long moment. We vowed to never let our relationship become so paralyzed by ego. It was a perfect September evening.

The temperature here in Atlanta is slowly rising. My nose isn’t cold anymore and I can wiggle my toes under the quilt with a little more comfort. My husband is in the kitchen trying to defrost salmon. It might be just warm enough to put some socks on and walk to the kitchen for some supper. But I'll stay wrapped in the quilt. After all, it's just warm air blowing through a vent.

Camping

My first backpacking trip with troubled youth had me outfitted with a borrowed pole tent and a trash bag for rain gear. Of course this would be the trip we let the kids make all the decisions. About 2 hours into hiking in the rain after dark I was rethinking everything about every decision I had made in the last two months. The layers of wetness on my person had become like second skin. The first layer of rain had mixed with sweat and formed a layer of grease over my skin that was close to my core body temperature; which was about as warm as shared bathwater when you are the youngest in a family of three. The new rain was getting colder to match the dropping temperature and hitting my uncovered head like nails dropping from the sky. I was carrying the rear of the group, supposedly making sure no one was attempting to run away. In truth, the only one even contemplating running was myself but I had no idea which direction would provide relief the quickest so I continued to follow the herd of troubled kids.

The trail was flat with the mountain to our right. When I say the mountain to our right, I mean you could hold out your right hand and steady yourself on the incline with not much lean. As we rounded to a creek I could see gear being shed through the black wetness and assumed this would be where we were staying for the night. I was one of two adults in charge of this operation and had no idea our coordinates or if the entire party was still with us. I found a flat ground and laid down my wal-mart tarp as my footprint and went to work securing shelter, my shelter that is. The damn kids were on their own. They had to go and snort Benadryl or break into a liquor store and now we all had to be miserable. That cool 22k I was bringing in for my new job with benefits was not in the front of my mind at that particular moment. I threw my pack into the opening of the tent and set the structure up with my gear inside. The tent had no rain fly so the footprint would have to be taken up to keep the rain from spitting through all night. By the time this was all taken care of my bed for the night was a puddle of water. In a panic I pulled any and all dry clothes from my pack to mop up the moisture, not thinking that I was breaking all ties at that moment with myself and anything dry for the next 48 hours at least. I caught my error just in time to retrieve my down sleeping bag and lay it on the borrowed thermarest. Water was already begin to pool around me on the tent floor. The sleeping bag was soaked at the head and foot but the middle was still dry. I recalled hearing from an eagle scout that the way to get the optimal warmth from your sleeping bag is to sleep in the nude. This worked out at the moment as I had no dry clothes left. So there I was, naked in a fetal position in the sleeping bag clamoring for the last few inches of dry as the water continued to fall and creep around me. This was my first job after quitting graduate school, my first venture out of science and into humanity as a profession. I still had a broken heart from a love lost that spring to the west coast. But I slept sound that night, curled in warmth, the stillness keeping me dry as I waited to be reborn in the first light of sun that would show me where I was in these dark north Georgia woods.

40 Words

He struck me as overly good-looking for someone both a preacher and a murderer. It was his physique, I would see him coming and going from the gym. That he tried so hard was the most troubling.

Maternity Ward

My mother did not call the entire last month of my pregnancy.  This was not unusual.  Ever since she became a minister her life was supposedly no longer her own and therefore we as her children had to get in line behind the endless tasks associated with guiding her flock.  And as if this were not enough, she had recently expanded her work to include an outreach ministry to the homeless.  Against the urging of her plaintive congregation, she had taken on the oversight of renovating Sunday school rooms to house the homeless in her small community on the Florida panhandle.  It was a visionary idea but quickly became the undoing of her life as a traditional member of the clergy. When she began her appointment at this particular church it housed your basic congregates of faith found in most protestant churches in the south.  There was a church secretary, vacation Bible school, a choir.  But the skyline from her pulpit changed significantly shortly after her endeavor to make her work as she put it more “transformational”.  Every 7-hour drive I made down Hwy 231 for a visit culminated in a knock on the door from law enforcement. A member of the church overdosed, a troubled youth kicked in a door, a pimp was hassling one of the shelter residents, and it went on and on. “Why can’t you just write sermons and preach to normal people?” I would wail. After all, we are Methodists; it’s not exactly a high maintenance denomination. My family blamed her new husband who seemed to have jump-started the whole thing by holding AA meetings in the church.  In the days leading to my first child being born I felt pretty sure she would not be involved.  Then I got a call late Saturday night as I was sitting in the bathtub in the early phase of contractions. She would be driving up after her church service the following day and planned to be there for the birth. Twenty-four hours later she held my son with tears in her eyes as I laid in my post partum bed laden with sleeplessness, epidural and post op drugs from the c-section.  The next day in the hospital my mother was a no show until 6 PM.  We had just got the baby to sleep when she stuck her head in the door.  She and her husband were on her way to dinner and quickly informed me that they would be returning home the following morning.  She had a paper to write for a graduate class she was taking in some minister education program she was in; church duties were calling her back, blah blah blah.  I didn’t have the energy to listen or respond.  “My HMO is more reliable than her” I cried to my husband after she left. The c-section had me stuck in bed for days trying to recover as I bonded with this new baby. My husband was still in school and only had a few days home with me before I was faced with new motherhood on my own.  My resentment toward my mother and her choices started to solidify in a way that could not be reversed.

Then, fourteen weeks later I returned to work and she came up for a week and half to stay with us and help me in the transition. I half expected the same manic, unfocused craziness I saw each time I went to visit. I was sure half way through there would be a crisis that would send her home early and my husband and I unexpectedly juggling childcare. The visit was anything but what I expected. She got in late Sunday night and met me in the baby’s room at the crack of dawn to help change him. Our laughter woke our husband as my new baby’s pee stream interrupted my rundown of where everything was. She cooked, cleaned, organized, and interacted with the baby non-stop. My husband was actually able to keep up with his school work for the first time since the baby’s birth. I greeted most mornings with tears over leaving the baby. Transitioning back to work was not greeted with much support from my workplace. One morning while my husband was letting me cry on my shoulder my mom came in. I wiped my eyes, and stiffened waiting to hear a superfluous metaphor that would end with “God Bless You” but instead she opened up. “When you were a baby you were on my hip all the time and I didn’t have a career. I know it’s hard but you are providing so much for your child by being independent and able to do both. I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but you are giving yourself so many more options.” I took in her words as if I were in the third grade soaking up her wisdom from my twin bed. Back then I knew no other source for where to get my advice and strength.

She was right. I remember how trapped she was all through my childhood. How much more she always wanted to do. I have worked in prisons, hiked the Appalachian trail with troubled youth, moved cattle in the rain for 14 hours straight, but this moment- motherhood is my pinnacle, where I see myself in my finest hour. I realized that for her, being a mom was not her greatest moment, it was now as she changes lives on a grander scale. We are two women, moving toward our dreams from two different polarities and in this moment we were meeting in the middle of a shared experience. Mom stayed the whole week and a half, she and her husband went and got us a load of garden mulch, took us to the Varsity, and my sock drawer makes more sense than it has in years. I’m planning a trip down in a few weeks and am sorting through my book collection to take a box for donation to the shelter. Mom says the women there need so much, it’s hard to know where to start.

Note to our Wedding Guests

Please do not be alarmed by the sheriff parked at the entryway to the inn. Please park on the left side, opposite the veranda.