My Existential AC Meltdown
sweating through familial conditioning
This week, I've been wondering, if I’m the only one haunted by echoes of my parents' traits in my own life? Here I am, at 33, still experimenting with identity, untangling lingering codependency and conditioning and in the most mundane moments, I find my parents seeping in even though they’re dead.
Several weeks ago I shuffled to the bathroom in the middle of the night. As I walked by the mirror, I stopped dead in my tracks. The way I was walking combined with the thin, well-loved shirt I wore, sent tingles through my body. It felt like my mother had crawled into my skin. Truthfully, I never recognized much of myself in my mom until she was gone. Now, as I tiptoe toward my mid-thirties, I see it frequently in my mannerisms and my body.
My mom quite possibly had the ugliest feet in the world—it’s not slander she would agree—I’m pretty sure you can’t slander a dead person anyways. Recently, as I dug my feet into the sand I looked at my toes and my stomach dropped. My deformed second toe nail looks an awful lot like my mom's, leading me to draw no conclusion other than in another ten years, I might be a contender in the ugly foot pageant. I’m also acutely aware that if I live to be older than 58, I will be in uncharted waters in terms of my appearance since my mom didn’t get to bring those ugly feet into her 60’s.
Each of these instances reminded me of the inescapable power of DNA and while I have no control over how much my body will grow to resemble my mom’s, I can control other things. Cue the air conditioning saga.
Growing up near the beach and in a house where my parents struggled to pay the phone bill meant that air conditioning wasn't really a necessity or a choice that was even entertained. While I remember some hot summer nights, sleeping with a fan next to my face, I wasn't any worse for the wear. Then, sometime in my early 20s, an air conditioner appeared in my parent’s bedroom. My mom seized every opportunity to share her hatred and passionately remark that having the windows in the bedroom closed made her feel like she was in a coffin. I bet you'd prefer the air conditioning now, wouldn't you, Mom?
While my mom complained about her lack of fresh air, my brothers and I were fuming literally and figuratively. Despite my dad's insistence that as long as he was paying the electric bill, the only bedroom that would be air-conditioned was his—we quickly took our young adult money and acquired our own. My brothers hunkered down in their new arctic tundra playing video games, meanwhile I only used mine for a week or two at most each summer.
Perhaps it’s what happens when you get older or when climate change rages onward, but I entertain the idea of a cool house more with each summer. I hate myself every time I use the cliché phrase, “I don’t mind the heat, but it’s the humidity I can’t stand,” but it’s true. My perpetually barefoot self can’t handle multiple days of a damp hardwood floor, and my head doesn’t enjoy a soggy pillow.
I’m privileged enough to be able to cool the first floor of my house if I want to. I inherited several air conditioners—remnants from my mom’s last summer, when we had to improve the air quality inside so her lungs didn’t work any harder than they had to. Now, as soon as the dew point gets over 70, they each start calling to me insistently. This is where the mental battle begins.
What are my thoughts about air conditioning?
What are the thoughts and beliefs that stem from conditioning and the way I grew up?
What the hell do I really want for the temperature of my home?
I’m not kidding. This is something I’m actively figuring out. Sometimes I find it comical that I have a master’s degree, cared for my mom during a terminal illness, buried a brother and both parents, own a house, and walked away from my career, yet I’m still untangling how much my thoughts about air conditioning are just, well, conditioned.
A part of me wears my “I never had air conditioning growing up and survived” badge proudly and tells me that I’ve just gotten soft.
Another tells me that I’m ridiculous and that if cooling the first floor of my house brings me some ease, I don’t need to abide by the same scarcity that my parents subscribed to and can put a damn air conditioner in the window.
Then there’s the part that feels precisely how my mom felt about air conditioning—suffocated and boxed in. I prefer to listen to the waves, the birds, and take the breeze I can through the open windows. The windows stay shut long enough in New England.
All the while another tells me that I only feel that way because that’s how my mom felt.
It’s a strange thing, untangling yourself from the beliefs of dead people. As for my decision, I can tell you my dad is most certainly rolling over in his grave remarking that I might be the most energy-inefficient human alive. I spent four days with the windows closed this week—the sounds of nature replaced by the overstimulating hum of fans. Shortly before I started writing this, I shut it all down and flung the windows back open, despite the humidity lingering for the next several days still. Good thing I pay the electricity bill now.
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