When in Georgia
b y L a u ra Pa c ka rd
Down here,
having access to a pool is not only a privilege, but also a deep and needful must for wellness of being, happiness, and overall relief for whatever ever ails you. See, Dante, in his Inferno, describes the 7th circle of hell as teeming with rivers of boiling fire, deserts of burning sand, and scorching rain that pours from the sky. In the South, we call this cataclysmic event “summer.” It all starts around May. This is when perfectly reasonable and respectable people are driven to their own kind of slow boiling insanity. It sneaks up on them like a swarm of sand gnats starved since early spring. It starts as a
simmer, this unyielding heat, a tease, a tickle that gets you going outside in the morning, but then causes you to make a hasty retreat back in by noon. There’s the creak of the ceiling fan that taunts you overnight while you try to sleep on top of the sheet. There are the bugs, the lizards, and the marsh crabs that let themselves in, without knocking first, to escape the scalding sun, scaring you half to death. There’s the lifeless, flat, hot air that rushes through the holes in your screens and under your doors, leaving a $600 electricity bill that makes you want to let out a bloodcurdling scream.
It’s so hot that snakes don’t hiss, they yawn. Gators don’t flex their jaws, they sleep it off. Birds don’t sing, they squawk before plucking your last Cheetos straight out of your hand. Humans don’t leave their homes unless it’s to drive to another structure packed full of equally cold and manufactured frigid air to just sit and stay awhile, reticent to leave. Unless, of course, there is a hole somewhere filled with water. That watery haven doesn’t have to be anything special, just something deep enough in which you can submerge most of your body parts. Add the allure of a frozen strawberry daiquiri or two, then, of course, we’re all in. (continues)
JUNE 2018
49
