Thank Heaven for Air-conditioning

I finally caved. For three days, I've had the urge to put a certain phrase for my Facebook status-its silly, completely innocuous, and most of all true, but every time I thought about typing it, something stopped me. What stopped me is that no one is left who would possibly understand why the phrase was anything more than just a utterance on an extremely hot day.

The story goes that when I was a very little girl, like younger than Tee even, my grandma taught me to say, "Thank heaven for air-conditioning," whenever we came out of the desert sun and into the nice, air-conditioned home. Not even much of a story, as far as stories go, but it must of struck my mom as really cute to see her toddler saying that, because whenever she would enter an air-conditioned home or building, she would say, "Thank heaven for air-conditioning." and tell whoever would listen that story. In fact, the weekend before she died, she mused that maybe she should teach Tee to say that phrase when entering a nice, air-conditioned room. I rolled my eyes.

Who knew that this week, I would be saying that over and over, not in any reference to my mom, but because we have had record heat in our corner of the country. And while the utterance is still true, I'm just shocked at how little meaning it has to anyone around me. Why would it? But it suddenly struck me how many phrases that lace my speech have so much wrapped up in the story of my history and my family. They may not sound important to anyone else, but there was someone else who knew when I said that, it didn't just mean, "boy, it feels good to be out of the heat," but there were layers of history and love in one phrase.

I finally put it in my status up-date. My friends will think, "yeah, it has been hot" or "she's got AC. Lucky!" (We probably live in the one region of the country where it's not standard.) But, it also means so much more.