6.16.2006
It’s hot. I’m baking. Actually, I’m smothering. Summer in north Florida is one of Dante’s Seven Circles of Hell. I leave my house every morning at 8:15 to drive 15 minutes to work. According to the thermometer in my new car, it’s already between 85 and 87 degrees outside. When I get to work it’s about 90 or so and not even 9 am. After I do my 1st half hour of stuff (opening the model, putting balloons outside) I’m literally dripping-oh wait, I’m southern so I don’t drip, I “glow”. So I’m glowing wet and my hair is curling up into puffballs beside my ears.
At times like this I really have to give thanks to God that I wasn’t born 100 years ago. I cannot even imagine my life if I had to wear a corset, crinoline, long dress with a high neck and a bonnet. Now, image having your monthly in August while dressed like that. Whenever we tour the Castillo de San Marcos in St Augustine I always wonder how those women survived a summer here without air conditioning, cooking over an open fire 3 times a day, many times they were pregnant and caring for several children while trying to make a home in a new world very different from their homeland. Even 50 years ago, things were so very different for wives and mothers, when my grandmother was pregnant in the 40s, after she began to show she didn’t leave the house, her family and friends as well as her church didn’t believe it was “decent” to show yourself as obviously pregnant. There wasn’t any air conditioning in Florida and my mother had to work the tobacco fields as a young teenager. My grandmother cooked 3 meals a day over a gas stove in a small cracker house to feed her 4 children and husband. They didn’t have an electric refrigerator, they had an icebox that couldn’t always keep up in the hot summers of Tampa. My mother’s first air conditioner was when she was 24 years old, and pregnant with me.
So, thank you to all the wives and mothers that came before me. You are all much better women than I could ever hope to be.
posted by Keriann at 6/16/2006 09:49:00 AM comment(s) made:
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