Woody’s award-winning debut novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.
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In the summertime, in my boyhood, in Ohio, humid nights sometimes refused to cool down much from the sunburned daytime making falling asleep next to impossible.
Pop, despite Mom’s pleas, refused to get air conditioning. He also refused to buy electric fans, despite the whining of us four kids, because he was convinced at least one of us would poke a finger through the wire cage guard into the whirling blade and he would have to rush us to the E.R. and personally sew the tip back on.
On the muggiest nights, when our pajamas clung to us like we had the flu and 102-degree temperatures, my siblings and I – and sometimes Mom, but never Pop who apparently could have fallen asleep in a steamy tropical rainforest – would peel off our PJs down to our BVDs and migrate downstairs to the dining room because it had floor-length windows that let in the softest whispers of a breeze. Lying next to the open windows we camped restlessly atop open sleeping bags.
As miserable as those sweltering sweaty sticky sleepless nights were, it’s funny how they are among my cherished memories – “marble-in-a-jar” remembrances, to borrow from last week’s column. In my mind’s eye and ears, I can still see and hear my two older brothers, bookended on either side of me, telling ghost stories and cracking jokes until our little sister would decide the jungle heat upstairs was preferable and left us alone to our tomfoolery. Eventually, of course, our laughter became snoring.
I was reminded of these miserably marble-ous memories after a similarly sleepless sultry night recently at my daughter’s home in the Bay Area. The guestroom, on the first floor and east facing, is generally so comfortably cool I cannot recall ever not needing a blanket even in summertime.
Not this time.
Opening the sliding glass door would have solved the problem for while the day had been hot, the evening cooled down very pleasantly. Alas, the house security alarm was turned on and I did not wish to wake my daughter or son-in-law to deactivate it; they had long earlier gone to bed, as is demanded when you have two young kids who rise and shine before the sun does.
Remarkably, my warmhearted Much Better Half, who favors a thermostat setting of “Igloo,” fell fast asleep in the sweat lodge-like heat as if sprinkled with fairy’s dream dust.
Unremarkably, in the wee hours I had to go to the bathroom – which proved to be a big relief in two ways, because in the hallway I was greeted by temperatures as cool as a TikTok influencer. Returning to bed, I left the guestroom door ajar to let the wintermint air drift in and said hello to dreamland.
Not so fast.
Moonlight now also sliced in through door crack, bright enough to be bothersome. No matter, I turned facing away and shut my eyes tight and…
…tick-tock Tick-Tock TICK-TOCK!
A wall clock in the nearby family room, unnoticeable during the noisy busyness of daytime, in the lonely quiet hours echoed like a pickleball match. It was water torture to the ears, and then…
…snore Snore SNORE!
It would be kind to describe it as a soft humming lullaby, but in truth the snoring was as loud and unmelodious as three young brothers cracking jokes on a hot summer’s night.
I was about to nudge Sleeping Beauty awake when it struck me that she was drowning out the far more annoying clock. Suddenly, I appreciated her snoring as a familiar lullaby indeed and drifted happily to sleep.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.
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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.
