July 12: Hot For It

I'm all hot for summer this year. The usual seasonal changes seem just fine with me for some reason in Summer 2010. I'm not even sure why. In the past when friends have asked me about living here in the summer months, I normally said things like, "I don't mind the summers in South Florida." Translation: It's really hot and humid and there's storms but I love South Florida so much I can cope with it. Because let's face it - it's different when you live with this weather all the time. Summer visits to South Florida are something else. They're wonderful. On my first two trips to this state, I arrived in the dead heat of mid-summer and loved it totally. I had come down from Michigan and Vermont, respectively, and so the humid shimmering warmth felt great.

The ocean here is like bathwater, the sun is intense, the drinks are chilled. What's not to like when you visit in July or August after enduring January and February up north? And that brings me back to our own South Florida weather this year. Now that I think of it, we did have a colder-than-normal winter. Not exactly frigid temps, mind you. But we really did experience unusual stretches of weather in the 60s and 50s. That's cold for us.

Do you think that's the reason I'm soaking up this July heat with relish? Hmm. Maybe. In early 2010, I had that slight, slight taste of an extended winter again. As an ex-northerner, I found that even a mildly wintry winter in South Florida served as some kind of reminder to me. I could more clearly recall those endless New England months when I had to zip up jackets and put on hats and boots just to go outside to empty the garbage. And I could remember the feeling of craving hot, hot sunshine. Yeah, maybe that is the reason that South Florida's summer weather feels especially fine to me this year. I open my door to step from air conditioning into powerful humidity and I actually enjoy the sensation. I sometimes find myself sitting on my patio without even clicking on the ceiling fan to create a breeze. And I'm loving those summer storms even more than I usually do. They come and go with a dramatic intensity, brief bursts of rain and thunder and lightning, normally followed by clear skies. I've always understood why northern folks would want to visit South Florida, including during our hot summers. We offer a taste of tropical refreshment after a diet of winter bitterness. But this year at least one full-time resident is eagerly sucking up the summertime tropics too.