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The biggest advantage that one can gain from being childless is the freedom and choice to help those who truly need it. When you have children in your care, your time can evaporate as their needs overtake your work hours. Last week, I helped drive a friend to her eye appointment, where she would have had a small procedure done. As a result, she would not have been able to drive or look at bright lights for the remainder of the day. Given that it was a stunningly clear day with soaring temperatures and her overall health was not well, I ensured that I had the time to drive her to and from her appointment.
“So where will you be in this heat,” she asked with one hand on my car door’s lever.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, pointing to the giant tree on the GPS screen in front of her.
“You’re going to a giant tree,” she said with a smirk, knowing well that it was a nearby park. As she left the car, we both exchanged sarcastic smirks as she passed across my front bumper. Seeing her posture immediately soften due to the heat, I planned to be back in an hour and a half with her favourite iced coffee beverage.
Toronto, along with most of the East Coast and other parts of the world, was experiencing a heat wave just in time for summer. We, in particular, were hit with a heat dome – a weather phenomenon consisting of a stagnant mass of hot air that restricts precipitation in the affected areas. The impact on the city’s citizens was not pretty. Tempers flared as people leaned on their car horns and made refused to give others the right of way on the thousands of radiating sidewalks.
I had a little over an hour to myself in the middle of the day, so I set my phone to notify me only if my emergency contacts tried to reach me, and I left my air-conditioned car. Blasted by the heat, I felt an initial trickle of sweat down the side of my face, and I planned a shortened walk. With my film camera in hand, I walked down the very long set of stairs from the park and into the ravine and managed to relax for the first time in over a week. A few people replied hello in turn, some stopped with their dogs for a small chat, and more than a handful continued on their walks, ignoring my greetings.
As the final frame on my roll of Kodak TMAX 400 was made, I slowly made my way back to the stairs, rewinding the film as I took my time. Midway up the stairs, I greeted another gentleman, who made no attempt to acknowledge my presence, but this time there was something wrong. There was something wrong with the haste at which he moved. The temperature was well north of thirty-two degrees Celsius, and the octogenarian’s strides resembled New Yorkers in the financial district walking from one meeting to the next.
As I reached the top of the stairs, a few dozen feet away, I could see a woman’s body on the ground, and a man was overlooking her. My view was blocked by a tree and the curve of the path. Both were partially under the safety and security afforded by the shadow cast by the large tree behind them, but they were both on concrete and not the grass. I immediately became concerned as I thought that no one would choose to lie down on the blistering concrete unless they had no choice. I quickly stopped rewinding the film in the camera, put it in my bag, and my steps hastened into a light jog. To my relief, there was no foul play at hand, just two dehydrated and overheated individuals.
Neither of them heard me approach and were shocked when they heard my voice. “Are you guys ok?”
The man looked at me with bloodshot eyes, drenched in sweat, and the woman continued her gaze toward the horizon as she breathed heavily. In front of her were several bottles of water and energy drinks, and the man held a nearly empty bottle himself.
“We’re fine,” said the woman in a voice much stronger than I expected. “I just overdid it.”
“I don’t have any water or first aid items with me that can help with dehydration, but there is a medical clinic up the road with a pharmacy on its ground floor,” I motioned with my hand southwest from where they were temporarily stationed.
Still silent, the man nodded his glistening head and gave me a soft blink, similar to the ones cats give their owners when they are about to relax into a bread loaf shape. I took this and his faint smile as a gesture of gratitude. Before making my way to my car, I once again asked if there was anything that I could do, and they both said that they only needed a little time to gather themselves.
Once in my car, I turned on the air conditioning and made my way toward the nearest coffee shop to buy my friend her favourite iced coffee. Upon seeing it, she was elated as she held the cup up to her forehead.
“Man, this heat has been killing me this week.” She’s more than a decade older than me, and her health has not been the best. Her last athletic venture was probably in her university days three decades earlier, and the strain from the short walk to my car was not lost on me.
“With all of this construction,” she continued, referencing Toronto’s horrible traffic that has been made worse by lengthy construction projects. “I simply turn off my air conditioning and open the windows.”
“Don’t you have a two-hour commute every day,” I asked.
“Yeah, and it sucks.”
“Please leave your air conditioning on during your commute,” I pleaded. “Your body needs to cool off. If you don’t, your heart rate will go up as it desperately tries to cool you off. Wait a second, are you using your air con at home?”
“Only for an hour when I get home, and for a bit in the morning when I’m showering,” she said as her eyes met my floormat.
“_____ (name omitted), please use your air conditioning. You can afford it. People die from this level of heat, especially if their bodies never get the chance to cool down.” I didn’t mention the fact that days earlier, more than a thousand pilgrims in Mecca died on the hajj pilgrimage because of this, for her body language conveyed that she already knew what to do.
“I know. It’s just the gratification of saving money, I guess,” she confessed as she took her first sip of her coffee.
“Austerity as a tool to feel better about ourselves is one thing, but not when it puts you in danger. Please promise me that you will try to keep yourself cool this summer?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you got it, don’t worry about me.”
As various lute suites by Bach played on my car’s stereo, we sat in silence as she closed her eyes, and I watched heat-soaked and strained pedestrians stand on sidewalks. All of them had the same stares that the two individuals I met at the top of the ravine had. It was then that it hit me that air-conditioning in the new world would soon become another human right. Much like how broadband internet was added to clean water as fundamental to humans leading a productive modern life, A/C should also be.
My mind started racing about all the people I know who do not have working air-conditioning units in their apartments, homes, and potentially long-term care centres, and I started making a mental list of people to call. Those relatively fit and below the age of thirty did not make the list, but the others, I could not even formulate a script for bringing this up on a phone call.
While still in traffic, enjoying Bach’s efforts and our iced coffees, I shortened the list to only two and planned on giving them a call after I dropped off my friend. As the week went on, I mentioned this topic to a lot of people, and a lot of them admitted to doing the same self-denial of A/C even though they could afford it. Some of them had young children and toddlers in their household, all of whom I saw were red-faced and panting as they struggled to keep up with where their imaginations were taking them.
On a couple of diving sites in the past, I had treated divers who had suffered from heat-related injuries, and they were never pretty. Glazed eyes and a sustained lack of focus haunted them for more than a day as efforts were made to keep them cool and hydrated. A few months earlier, someone dear to me had near-fatal brain damage due to an elevated fever.
The previously stated biggest advantage of being childless and without a life partner can also become a major disadvantage. Without a prescribed set of humans to look after immediately, one’s concern drifts over onto every single person who may be in distress.
So, to you, dear reader, please take care of yourself this summer season. Do not view your suffering from the heat as a rite of passage toward being able to sleep with yourself. We will need to adjust our perspectives as the world becomes more extreme in all aspects. Continual monitoring of how we take care of ourselves is more important now than in recent memory.