Portland Summer Heat Amnesia

Every June, I wake up and think: This year will be different.

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This year I will prepare for the heat. I will buy a window unit. I will research portable AC. I will at least clear out the garage so my daughter has somewhere to not lose her mind (while I dont lose mine).

By July 15th, none of that has happened. It's 97 degrees. My house is a convection oven. My kid is a feral little creature who will not nap, will not play outside (too hot), will not do anything except demand popsicles and ask me why I haven't fixed the weather, "its one million twenty degrees in here mommy!"

This is not new information. This happens every single year. And yet every single year, I act shocked.

The thing about Portland is that we get to pretend Portland summer heat doesn't exist here. Six months of clouds and rain and the constant threat of more rain. We build our entire lives around the assumption that summer will be moderate. We choose old houses with thin walls and no AC. We say things like "I don't need air conditioning, Portland doesn't really get that hot." We say this while sweating directly onto our children.

I moved to Portland specifically for the weather. Leaving Denver, the actual dry suffocating heat where you can't breathe and your brain stops working. Portland seemed like the promise of forever-mild. It was a lie I chose to believe, and I chose to keep choosing it.

So every year I forget. Every year I'm caught off guard. Every year mid-July hits and I'm scrambling like I didn't know this was coming, like the sun is a personal betrayal.

By the time it's 98 degrees and my kid is crying because her room is too hot and her clothes are too itchy and nothing is fair, I'm not just dealing with a miserable 4-year-old. I'm dealing with my own failure to plan. I'm frustrated at myself, which means I'm frustrated at her, which means we're both melting and furious.

The dumbest part is that I could fix this. I have a credit card. I could buy a window unit tomorrow. But there's this weird Portland thing where having air conditioning feels like admitting defeat. Like I've given up on the city's promise. Like I'm being dramatic. Like everyone else manages to survive without it, so if I can't, that's a personal failing.

Here's the truth though: everyone else either has air conditioning or they leave. They go to the coast, or the mountains, or they visit family somewhere else. They don't sit in a 98-degree house with a child who thinks the best way to handle heat stress is to make loud, high-pitched sounds for hours.

I stay. Because I'm stubborn, or because I can't afford it, or because I want to prove something, or because some part of me actually believes that next year will be fine, that this summer was just an anomaly, that Portland really won't do this to me again. ITS LIKE, 6 DAYS A YEAR, HOLD OUT!

It will. It does. Every single year.

And every single year, around June, I'll wake up and think: This year will be different. This year I will prepare.

This year, I'm lying to myself again. I already know how this ends. My daughter is in the backyard at 7 AM before it gets too hot. We're eating dinner at 5 PM to avoid turning the house into a furnace. I'm Googling portable AC units at midnight and then closing the tab because I can't commit to the purchase.

By August, I'll be fine again. The temperature will drop. Portland will return to its cool, rainless self. I'll believe the promise again. I'll forget how bad it was.

This is amnesia. Willful, deliberate, stupid amnesia. And I do it on purpose.

Next June, I'll be shocked all over again.

Anyone else relate? lol.

-A