At play in the fields of Hades

I step carefully out of the building, waiting for the slow, suffocating heat to wrap its heavy arms around my body. Sweating already, I take the few steps across the street and make my way into the air-conditioned grocery store. Πολλή ζέστη, the only remark on everyone’s lips. Yes, it is very hot, too hot for steaming city cement, too hot for the sea breeze to make its way through the maze of buildings, so hot the humidity reaches down into your lungs and threatens to choke you, bringing up each breath as if it were your last.

The city becomes a shallow grave, the people walk slowly, carefully, wondering when –or if - they will be rescued. Do we have enough air to last another week? Or maybe just a couple more days. We’ll all survive just the same, like we always do, trudging our way through the heat of a city summer.

The heat is always the same, it doesn’t matter much what city you are in. Thessaloniki or Nashville, Athens or Baltimore. The same lugubrious, still air. The same bedraggled faces. The same hopeful look at a wispy, promising breeze that dies as quickly as it came, leaving you with nothing, an ice cream cone upturned on the boiling pavement.

Leaving the grocery store, my husband heavy laden with bags, I reach the outside air and find a smile instead of a groan. This could be Nashville, I realize, and my mind floods with memories of the deck at Bongo Java, the trails at Radnor Lake, Summer Lights Festival, Shakespeare in the Park – happy memories of hot days, long summer days, days just like today. As I stumble out of the heat dampened hallway into my apartment, I drink in one last memory, and close the door.