Dear Diary: Hot & Cold
The apartment is irremediably hot. Warm, humid, still. Evaporated perspiration burns my skin. In the blue room, a window unit coughs out chilled air, but not enough of it, and without the Vornado fan at my feet I’d be wretched.
It is at least five degrees cooler out on the balcony, but because the air is as humid out there as it is in the apartment, we don’t cool off. If some sort of high front were to blot up the damp, I’d be instantly comfortable. Unseasonable warmth has besieged us before the building’s management can have been expected to shift the HVAC to air-conditioning.  It doesn’t help that I’m working my way through the long tail of a cold.
The good news is that tomorrow is another day.
Will had his four-month checkup at the pediatrician’s this morning, and shots were involved. The good news was a nap that lasted an unbelievable two-and-a-quarter hours; somewhat against his mother’s inclination, I insisted on waking him up, because putting it off — he wouldn’t be feeling well when he woke, he’d want a change, and he’d be hungry, all at once — would only intensify the fuss. Will is never more heartbreakingly adorable than when he tries to smile through his tears, as he did over and over again when roused from the long nap. The bottle provided some consolation, but between intakes what calmed his spirit was the view from the balcony.
For Will to have a view from the balcony, over my shoulder, meant that I spent a lot of time looking at the impatiens and geraniums that I potted up last week — not very interesting, really. I can’t say what Will was actually gazing at, but I expect that it was the moving traffic way down on 86th Street. I had the oddest memory of standing on the balcony with Megan, when we were still new to the apartment and she was visiting from Houston; odd because in this memory Megan was very taken by yellow cabs, by the color of them, which of course she never saw in Houston although she had some sort of taxi toy. What’s odd, of course, is that Megan was eleven years old when we moved into this apartment, not seven or eight, which is how old she is in my memory of the taxi excitement. I’ve undoubtedly conflated two experiences. But I will never have to wonder how old Will was when he first peered down onto 86th Street, where the taxis are still slicker-yellow.
I did have this insufferably snobulesque fantasy the other night, sitting out on the balcony in the early evening. Looking off into Queens, I imagined reminding Will that Queens is Over There, but that he comes from Right Here, meaning Manhattan. Will and I are the only members of our immediate family to be able to make that claim. (Because Will’s parents actually lived on the island when he was born, his claim is even better than my more transient one.) But I feel it keenly. This hunk of deciduous granite is my true patrie, and I hope that Will will grow up to feel the same. We are both Sons of Otis — scions of the land of elevators.