‘Isn’t it strange how last summer I spent a lot of time
wishing this car had proper air conditioning? And how I drove to work most days with
the cold air on full-blast – the windows open to let a bit of a breeze in?’
We were driving home, my brother and I, from Glasgow after (an amazing) Olafur Arnalds' concert. It was close to midnight. Sleet was smattering the windscreen.
‘Remember how warm it was?’ I went on, almost talking to
myself. ‘How roasting it was in July? It’s hard to remember what that actually
felt like...’
I was thinking of bare legs, and painted toenails, and skirts
and dresses and sunlight dropping into my lap. There had been days in the café where it was so hot – so stickily,
shiningly hot – that, as a special treat from the managers to staff, we were all allowed to unbutton the top button of our shirts. We were allowed to work tie-less for a while.
If I've not mentioned it already, this winter has been
wearing me down a little. The icy rain. The darkness. The whipping wind that
makes my mascara run as I bundle down Buchanan Street towards the train
station. A couple of weeks ago, the cold air dried out my skin so completely
that I felt like I was walking around – counting out change, writing my name –
with hands that belonged to a stranger. Cracked skin around my knuckles, scabby scaly roughness to touch. It took half a tube of intensive moisturising cream
to rub them back into something I recognised.
‘Summer seems so impossible in the middle of winter,’ I said to Evan. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. ‘Right now, the summer feels so impossible.’
He sat quiet, as he often does when he’s thinking. The rain had picked up outside now and streetlamps flashed watery orange light squares across the dashboard. I turned the heating up as high as it would go, trying to angle the air-stream towards my face. And then he said,
‘Summer will come again.’ (Saying the words slowly - as though he suspected I'd been talking about more than just the cold weather.)
‘It’s not
impossible,' he said. 'Summer'll come back round again. It does every year.’
The windscreen wipers squeaked.
♥
I'm going to try and hold onto those words
this week and maybe try and complain a little less. It feels imposssible, but Summer will come again because this coldness isn't lasting. It will come back around.
It always does.