As if I needed a reminder that my heritage is Irish and Canadian, this heat wave has really brought it home to me.  While some think my aversion to heat is age related, the truth is that I have vivid memories of sleepless nights when I was seven, long before I had heard the word "menopause" and also, not coincidentally, long before I owned my first air-conditioner.  To heck with the popes.  Let's canonize whoever invented THAT puppy.

Even as the sidewalks fry and the boys go off to their respective jobs for the summer, I can hear the first hum of "back to school" not far away and this year it is bringing more than the usual sense of dread.  The college financing in this country is insane, second only to our medical system, which is a raging disgrace.  Son Number One is half way through, but I have no idea if he'll make it the rest of the way or not at this rate.  Son Number Two has just begun.  It's a strange system when a parent feels like an out and out failure for not coming up with a quarter of a million dollars for a four-year education, but that's the way it is.  I console myself with our blessings.  I know people who have to come up with that much and more to pay for chemotherapy not covered by our ridiculous healthcare system.  There are people whose children are hooked on drugs and who have no future at all in front of them.  My boys are both smart and caring, healthy and resourceful.  We have so much for which to be grateful.  But in these days of trying to figure out how to make it all work out, it's not only the thermometer that's keeping me awake.

"God is never outdone in generosity," says Sister Miriam, and it has become my mantra.  Still, there are some days when I wonder if I did the right thing by giving up a good job and staying home for all those years while they were little.  Looking at them, I can't imagine how they could have turned out any better, but there's always that feeling that it's not enough.  So I'll buy a lottery ticket when Himself isn't looking (you have to give God room to perform a miracle now and then) and keep plugging away at the two jobs which don't amount to a third of what I used to make fifteen years ago, and figure it out one day at a time, like everyone else.  And I'll remember that while it's a hundred degrees here today, I'm not carrying a sixty-pound backpack through the desert.  Bless our soldiers and don't complain.  Things could always be a lot worse.

Turns out that steroids have a funny effect on me.  They are doing the job as far as reducing the swelling from the poison ivy, but I am as wired as if I had drunk five espressos just before bed.  Himself is breathing quietly, but it's too loud for me, and I could swear I hear the grass growing out there.  This is a lonely time of night (morning) when the world has turned the switch to "off" and mine is stuck in the "on" position.  The computer provides the only light on the lower floor of the house.  I have one of those nifty keyboards that lights up so I can see what I'm typing.  I know the light is the last thing I should be looking at before trying to sleep but company is company.

Or it could be the prospect of picking out my parents' headstone tomorrow that looms large over my bed, causing me to toss and turn and never find a comfortable spot.  It's been almost eight months since my mother's death, and over eighteen years since my father's.  She always used to say she couldn't rest until she had bought the marker for his grave.  I guess she stretched that excuse as far as she could make it go, because she was nearly ninety by the time she left and now it's up to me.  Cemeteries are funny places.  Some people make a ritual of visiting graves and tending flowers as one last "thing to do" for someone, and that's lovely.  It's just never been me.   To me that's like enshrining the cocoon when the butterfly has flown, or hanging onto the wrapper when the candy bar is gone.  That's not where I look for my loved ones.  Still, these things must be dealt with and here it is in my reluctant lap at last.  And all the silt of grief which has been gently drifting to the bottom to settle in a quiet pattern is about to be kicked up into a little maelstrom again.

Ah, the joys of summer.  For the first time in my life I am dealing with a case of poison ivy.  Oh, big deal, I know.  I mean I did do it up brown (wouldn't I just).  It's all infected and oozy and I'm on steroids and antibiotics.  Mood swings are a by-product of the first.  Be warned.  The itch is not as bad as many have experienced, and I have stopped popping the blisters like bubble wrap, so that's a good thing.  One does get tired of looking like a leper, however.

Outside of that I just continue to be amazed at how fast the summer is zooming by again.  Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Christmas.  That's pretty much it.  I have yet to put a toe in a pool, and that must be rectified soon.  We did spend four days in New York visiting dear friends.  It was the closest thing to a vacation I've had in ages.  I slept late every day, ate all the wrong foods, and went through two books like a hot knife through butter.  As always, from the minute we arrived the boys disappeared into the "man cave" with the big TV, air hockey table, ping pong table, and questionable movies.  They lay around on giant cushions in the dark for most of the day, having stayed up until zero-dark-thirty each night before.  We only see them at meal times when we visit.  But it's fun.  They used to have a pool, which was a welcome diversion and occasionally coaxed the boys out of the cave, but that got dismantled, and it was too hot to go outside to play Frisbee or anything else.  On the bright side, their dog stopped having a nervous breakdown every time we walked through the room.  Himself isn't fond of dogs to begin with, and that was too much for him to take.  They didn't make friends, but they both stopped growling.

That feeling of panic is just starting to set in.  That "What do I want to do this summer and how will I ever fit it all in?" hysteria has just begun to sing its siren song.  There's a feeling of obligation to get "out there" and "do something" while the weather is lovely.  There's an urgency to have fun.  The summers left when the boys will be sleeping on their own pillows are numbered, so each one has to be paid proper attention.  I know what I won't be doing out there.   Weeding.  And please pass the calamine lotion.

On this, the day after Canada Day, I will sing at the funeral of my 95 year old friend Annie, who hailed from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.  The wake was last night and I saw so many faces I haven't seen in more than 35 years.  How did we all get this old?  Most of the faces hadn't changed.  The two nuns are white, not gray now, but otherwise unchanged.  Aunt Isabel continues to exude joy and leave a trail of peace in her wake.  There were new faces (to me) as well.  My old "boyfriend", Annie's son, was standing with his two grown sons.  The kids I held in my arms are parents now.  Some of them are grandparents now.

Yesterday was also the birthday of my older brother.  He would have been 69 if he hadn't died at 22.  I wondered if he would have had gray hair or gone bald, how many barbecues we have missed at his house and how many children he would have had.  What would his wife have been like?  In this Year of The Big Losses nostalgia is creeping in, and I find myself aching for I know not what.

Tonight, however, there will be a dinner with "Uncle Vinny", an old friend (in both senses) and a joy.  He has driven to Boston from Ohio again (at age 82) and loves to see my kids, especially the one I named after him.  But first there's a funeral to attend on this gray day, and like it or not, it's time to face (and make) the music.