Moving On Up

Being born in Florida in the late 21st century seemed to be a difficult enough burden for anyone. That didn't seem to be enough for the powers in charge of this world. The first adventure I had in this crazy and broken world was nearly my last. 

My well-intentioned parents put me in the best stroller technology had to offer at the time. One-handed fold, dual cup holders, diaper bag slot with fold-out changing tray, and a phone holder with solar panel charging station made it top of the line. It even had a little spot left over for an infant. So, one week after my mother pushed out her first of many children, we headed out for a family walk. 

The latest craze in parenting, a book that laid around my house unread for months, probably years, emphasized the importance of bonding with your baby by physical contact and close interactions. However, my well-intentioned parents, believed in the 'let them cry it out' parenting style. 

Thus, on our initial family walk, the stroller was christened with tears. As we headed down the street toward the sunset, trying our best to be a real-world Norman Rockwell painting, this little baby stared straight into the sun. That day's air temperature hovered around ninety degrees, which is not a bad day for Florida with global warming. The stroller seemed to trap that heat and tried to bake me like a ham in said Rockwell painting. 

As my mother caved and checked on her crying baby, she saw her little bundle of joy had turned as red as a reservation hot dog. I laid there as plump and juicy as any well-grilled, processed sack of meat. Hives so bulbous all over my tiny body, the sweat barely had room to escape. They called 9-1-1, and the ambulance showed up in time to give me the proper shots so I could breathe again. 

That led to so many doctor visits and tests that my first memory is of a hospital waiting room. I stood at one of those toys in the waiting room with the maze of intertwined multi-colored wires and the wooden shapes that slid up and down and around. They always fascinated me as a kid. Let's be honest, I could still play with one today as an adult. 

The result of all those tests finally stated that I am allergic to extreme heat. Not a great diagnosis for someone living on a planet suffering from crippling global warming. Many species adapt and mutate to help themselves survive. My body decided to go the opposite way. 

"What's the biggest problem with the place you live right now? Okay, let's be deathly allergic to that."

To be clear, the sun itself does not bother me. Sitting in the comfort of a well-air-conditioned room, I could look out the window and wonder what life was hiding from me. In fact, along with reading, these were my favorite activities. Watching the crazy Floridian kids up and down the street is better than anything that was on the stream. We had one neighbor who loved to let his kids run around their yard with nothing on but a diaper. Sometimes, the diaper was optional. He would chase them and spray them with the garden hose. His wife would yell at him that water cost too much to waste it like that. 

My reading taste was classic all the way. Adventure stories from the great writers filled up my bookshelves. Yes, I loved to read actual books. Hold the pages in my hand and breathe in the smell. Of course as the trees became scarcer, paper books were harder to find. This led to a focus on the classic authors Tolkien, L'Engle, Rowling, and Sanderson. My poor parents spent so much time in used bookstores. People tend to go overboard when driven by sympathy. 

My parents loved Florida, but it simply got too hot. So as I entered my teenage years, they uprooted the whole family and we moved to the northern United States. Minnesota, to be exact. A large small town called Duluth sat on the edge of Lake Superior. It was said to be a climate change resistant city. Well the people that claimed that deeply underestimated the stupidity of the human race. 

 While I could live a somewhat typical life during the winter months, summer returned me to the confines of my air-conditioned house existence. My well-intentioned and well-educated parents did manage to buy a comfortable house on the edge of town near the northern shore, as locals and tourists called it. 

One summer afternoon the air temperatures hovered around 110 degrees. But with the humidity it felt at least fifteen degrees warmer. We got a notice that the area would have rolling black outs to conserve energy. This summer routine usually lasted around an hour. 

My mother and I completed our well-practiced preperations. My father would have to miss out on this one, as he was traveling for his job. All the devices had been charged, and we had set up everything we needed in our small room that had a solar powered air conditioning unit. It didn't work great, but enough to keep the room at a temperature that prevented my death. 

As the time approached, we got comfortable with some books in our blackout room. My mother sat on the wood floor and leaned against the light blue wall with her book. A fantasy novel with magic lands and heroes rested in her left hand. I laid my head on her lap with my book, a classic fantasy with a heroine and her crusade to overthrow an evil empire, laid out in front of my eyes. Her free hand, when not turning pages, gently stroked my hair. The unit ran, and we both disappeared into our stories. 

As the real world flooded back at the end of a chapter, I stretched and sat up. I asked my mother for the time. This question snapped her out of her fantasy world. I asked her if the power was back yet. Her brow scrunched up as she stared into her phone. She told me that over two hours had passed, and she had a notification that there would be a delay in the power returning. 

Her hand ran across my forehead, not in a loving, comforting way, but to wipe away some sweat that trickled down. Her efforts at remaining calm were betrayed by her eyes. Her right hand reached for the air conditioning vent. A small crease in her forward twitched and let me know what she felt. 

She gently moved my head off her lap and stood up. She took short but quick strides out the door to check on the air conditioner. I sat on the floor, trying to think of something besides the heat. My eyes ran across the titles of the bookshelf, which covered the entirety of two opposite walls of the room. I scooted across the floor over to the closer shelf and reached out my hand, so it ran across some of the books. The clicking of my fingernails, as they brushed across the old spines, helped calm my worries. 

Until I saw small bumps forming on the side of my index finger. Above the knuckle on the outside part of my right index finger. At the same moment, a bead of sweat rolled off my brow and into my left eye. I blinked furiously to stop the slight burning. My heart rate picked up to match my anxiety. I brought up my right hand to try and help wipe away the sweat and felt the bumps from my finger as they rubbed up against my brow and temple. They had almost doubled in size. 

My mother came back into the room and said the air conditioner was not working. She tried a few things but couldn't get it going. I held out my finger to show her the bumps. This time, as she left the room, she took quicker and much longer steps. My index finger had started to swell up like a plump sausage being heated on a charcoal grill. My throat started to tingle, and that kicked off the panic. Then Mom charged back into the room with an Epipen as if it were the last charge on Mordor. She knelt beside me and stabbed my thigh with her weapon, then locked eyes with me for five seconds as she held it in place and told me it was going to be okay. 

I was yanked to my feet with more strength than I knew my little mother had. After being dragged to the garage and told that we were driving to the hospital, I felt the full effects of the Epipen. My fingers started to look normal, and the tickle in my throat had dissipated. As my symptoms melted away as the glaciers had done decades ago, my anxiety also let go of its tight grip on my chest. 

Our hybrid vehicle pulled out onto the road, and with the roar of the air conditioning, everything felt better. This lasted as long as the main climate change deal between the countries of the world in the early 21st century. With the house still in our rearview mirror, every warning light turned on, and the car came to a halt along the side of the road. Apparently, the car didn't want anything to do with this heat either. 

This left us about a mile outside of town with the late afternoon noon sun beating down on the road, our car, and us. With no phone, which lay on the floor in the house, next to our fantasy books, my mother was out of the car and dragging me down the road towards town. After a few minutes, I told her we needed to slow down. Sweat poured down my face, and I could feel my body trying to hold on as the last bits of the EpiPen shot kept the hives at bay. 

My mother stopped when she saw me, then cursed herself for not bringing water or ice packs. She then locked eyes with me and said, it should take about twenty minutes for us to walk to the hospital from here, and that Epipen would save you for about twenty minutes after the injection. As the last sentence came out of her mouth, we didn't have time to slow down; she turned and dragged me back to the pace of an Olympic walking racer. 

My fingers started to swell again as she held my sweat-drenched hand. She might as well have been leading a blind person for all the sweat that poured down my face and into my eyes. Along with the race of us against time, my heart was in the middle of a battle between exertion and anxiety as both tried to push it over the limit. 

I could feel the heat radiating off my forearms as little bumps appeared up and down my body. My shoes tightened their grip on my feet as the swelling started working its way down my body. Have you ever walked with pillows strapped to your feet? In a race? For your life?

This is when my throat started to tingle. As I fell to the ground, I had a newfound empathy for that blueberry girl in that ancient Willy Wonka story on the stream. As my mother turned around to try and help me up, I saw that her face was just as sweaty as my own. This tiny woman reached down and put me on her shoulder and started walking towards town. I tried to protest, but my throat had begun to close. My vision started going black as I heard my mother yelling to hold on and that we were going to make it. 

My eyes opened in an unfamiliar room. Tall walls of gray mist surrounded me. I sat in a small chair with my favorite wire toy in front of me. I started to move around the small wooden pieces up and down the wires to try and get them all together. I couldn't get it to work. One of the wires looped back to one side and wouldn't allow the pieces to all fit together. As I held that piece, it burned my hand. I moved another piece, and it burned my hand. As I pulled my hand away a second time, I looked up. 

The ceiling looked like a cloudy night, with moonlight peeking through small gaps. A fine mist started pouring down from above me. The water was cool and relieved the pain. I leaned back in the chair and let the rain wash away the pain, the heat, and the anxiety. The white mist swirled around me as I opened my eyes again. The faces of my family framed above me in light.