I am having a Hot Grandma Summer. I am no grandmother (I don’t even have kids let alone grandkids), and I mean Hot as in overheated and on the verge of a meltdown, not wildly attractive. Just so you know where I am coming from. But in trying to make myself as comfortable as possible over the next few months, I am taking a page from the books of grandmothers.
I am wearing capri pants, which I recall a friend making fun of a few years ago. Whatever! This hemp pair was an Instagram ad from a place called Toad & Co. and I was influenced because their models looked cool and comfortable and like their pants had air conditioning. I bought a pair for myself, and they really do feel like it! These dowdy clam diggers that end mid-calf can BREATHE. I wear them with an Iron Maiden tee shirt.
I’ve been braiding my hair back in a Princess Leia hairdo that gets it completely out of my face. Not the fancy ceremonial ones from the throne room, but the practical Hoth braids when she’s gotten down to business. My hair is long enough now that I can wrap it around itself and stick a few bobby pins in to hold everything in place. I could do a claw clip but that always looks sloppy. This is much tidier, and it is definitely a little Tasha Tudor old-fashioned (which I love), but most importantly, it keeps everything off my neck when it’s ninety-five degrees and humid, and I am sweaty and broiling and overstimulated by the feeling of hairs touching my face.
I schedule time to watch my programs. Not binge-watching or catching up on shows, but watching my programs with the gravity of someone who has made an appointment. I love the specificity of that phrase – it makes passive television consumption sound like a medical procedure or a civic duty. Currently, I’m working my way through old episodes of Midsomer Murders, which is perfect grandma viewing. Cozy English villages, murder by hedge trimmer, John Nettles looking concerned while standing next to a flower bed. It’s exactly the right pace for someone who is having an evening snack of prunes and Sleepytime tea. I’ve spent the last few years so busy reading (which I will never complain about, but) I haven’t been watching much of anything at all. Thinking about it this way makes it a little easier to step away from a book. Also, my eyes aren’t great, and I need to give them a break every once in a while!
I grow vegetables because I like to see a pile of colorful vegetables stacked high in a basket (see also spilling-over jewelry boxes and dragon’s hoards), and because there’s something deeply satisfying about eating a pepper that you watched grow from a tiny seedling into something substantial enough to stuff. This year I’ve got peppers and eggplant, which seem to handle the Florida heat better than most things. The kale proliferates with zero help from me, and I’ve got lots of herbs that I use approximately half of but I don’t feel guilty wasting them because I like to look at them and sniff them, too. Our squashes all got destroyed by vine borers, which was disappointing but not surprising. Florida heat kills a lot of stuff. Which is why next summer I think I might just try growing pretty flowers. A harvest of colorful blooms is almost as good as a pile of vegetables!
I pickle things, which sounds very industrious and domestic goddess-y until you realize it’s basically just shoving vegetables into jars with vinegar and waiting. I’m terrified of canning, so I’m not over here poorly sterilizing jars and giving people botulism – this is all refrigerator pickles that get eaten within a few weeks. Mostly cucumbers, onions, and carrots. I like sharp, sour, tangy things, and the more with which to give me a pinched and puckered face, the better.
My hands hurt nowadays but I’m still knitting, albeit very slowly, like a determined turtle with inflamed joints and a concerning click in their wrist. After 20+ years of knitting, I have discovered I like working on socks best – they’re portable, they don’t require too much thinking, and even knitting the same pattern a million times, they’re still interesting. First, you knit the cuff, which leads into the ankle, and before too long, you’re turning the heel and decreasing for the toe stitches, and you’re never really working on one part long enough for it to get tedious. For years, I knit complicated lace shawls, trying to one-up myself with each new project, but at this point, I know my skills and my limitations, and I am just here for a reliable, good time. (I think a reliable, good time is a common thread woven throughout grandma core.) Anyway, I’ve been working on the same pair for months because I only knit a few rows at a time while watching my programs. At this rate, John Nettles will solve several more murders before I finish the heel turn.
I spend a lot of time on the screened back porch these days, iced drink sweating in my hand, bare feet cool on the concrete while the ceiling fan spins lazily overhead. I listen to birds – not in any serious birdwatching way, I couldn’t tell you what half of them are, but their constant chatter is hypnotic, and I love imagining that they have very important business to attend to. When we can only hear the calls but can’t see the birds, I use the Cornell Merlin app to figure out what’s making all the noise. I always remember how I’d see old people sitting on their porches, looking for all the world like they are doing absolutely nothing. But, man, I get it now. Yvan and I sat out on the porch two weekends ago for four hours just talking and listening to birds and it’s a good time.
I take magnesium baths because I read somewhere that magnesium is good for sleep and joints and muscles. I don’t usually have trouble sleeping, but I don’t want to take any chances! I sink into hot water and let the day dissolve while I think about absolutely nothing, which is harder than it sounds but gets easier with practice. Sometimes though, I watch YouTube videos of single Japanese ladies making dinner, or ASMR head spas.
I do my strength exercises so if I fall down, I can get up. This seems like essential life skills at forty-nine. I do the NYT puzzles and I am getting very good at Wordle, which makes me feel smugly accomplished in a way that’s probably disproportionate to the actual achievement. I attack my hobbies with the enthusiasm of someone who has given up any illusion that they give a single shit about their job. My job has never been my passion and I’m not about to start now, which means I can throw myself into crosswords and knitting and pickling with complete abandon and zero guilt about spending three hours on a puzzle.
In 2016 I suddenly remembered the library existed and have been making up for lost time ever since. I read my library books with the devotion of someone who feels like they need to personally justify the entire public library system through sheer volume of usage. I’m currently holding for about 50 gazillion books and I am about to incite an old lady beatdown on whoever it is that’s taking so much time with the new Riley Sager novel. Seriously, how long does it take to read a cheesy thriller? There’s something both maddening and delightful about the digital library hold system – it’s like having a very slow, very unpredictable book fairy who sometimes delivers exactly what you want to your tablet and sometimes makes you wait four months for the privilege. I’ve been reading a lot of nature writers recently. I do love me some Robert MacFarlane, but his dense, poetic prose sometimes lends itself to spending three years on one book because you can only read a few paragraphs at a time, so I’ve been gravitating toward lighter nature writing – the kind where someone walks around looking at birds or trees and tells you about it without requiring a philosophy degree to follow along. Terry Tempest Williams, Annie Dillard when I’m feeling ambitious, Sy Montgomery when I want to read about octopuses being weird and wonderful. I like reading people who are paying attention to the world in ways I wish I was better at, especially when I refuse to leave the house for four months at a time. I am also on hold for something called The Bean Book. This feels like peak grandma energy to me.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Ella Fitzgerald and Alice Coltrane and bossa nova, plus some Khruangbin and Skinshape – atmospheric and expansive music that feels sophisticated, spacious, and contemplative. Ella is for Sunday mornings with coffee, when her voice feels like the perfect soundtrack to moving slowly through the house in my pajamas. Bossa nova is for when I’m cleaning or cooking – those gentle rhythms make chopping vegetables or folding laundry feel less like chores and more like meditation. Alice Coltrane, Khruangbin, and Skinshape are for lighting incense and reading at night, Alice’s harp and their ambient textures floating through the room while I sink into a book and let the day officially end.
I’ve also got very specific personal sayings I’m incorporating into my mental dialogue this summer: “Be grateful, not hateful!” and “Always choose the option with sprinkles!” These are my own little grandma mantras, though you probably get the context in which they might be used, and they may work for you, too. “Be grateful, not hateful” is for when I catch myself sliding into resentment or bitterness and need to redirect toward appreciation instead. “Always choose the option with sprinkles” is about picking joy and the more delightful choice when I have options, even if it seems silly or indulgent. It’s so easy for me to get sucked into feeling sorry for myself in the summertime, and I am trying to combat this in even the most cheesy ways. These cheerful little sayings are deliberately upbeat, slightly corny wisdom that feels very much in the Hot Grandma Summer spirit.
I am also taking a break from social media again this summer – 2.5 months this time instead of the one month I did last year – and so I have no idea what’s going on with anything or what’s hip or cool or which celebrity said what stupid thing this week. Where this once made me frantic with FOMO, now, it just feels like the most unimaginable sort of relief.
You might look at all of these things and think…Sarah…this is pretty much exactly what you’ve always done as long as I’ve known you! Ok, you got me. I have always worn shapeless, comfortable clothing and loved murder mysteries and dreamy music. I’ve been knitting since I was twenty-five and cooking since forever. Maybe calling it Hot Grandma Summer is just giving a name to what I was already doing, or maybe I just wanted an excuse to buy new pants. Either way, here we are.
Last week I wrote about my folk horror summer survival guide, and this week I’m talking about Hot Grandma Summer, which might seem like I’m all over the place, but hear me out. I am doing these in tandem. Both are ways of connecting to older rhythms – whether that’s ancient folklore or traditional domestic practices. Whether I’m lighting incense and reading about stone circles, or sitting on the porch with an iced drink, watching heat lightning, and listening to tinny jazz on Bluetooth speakers, it’s in service of creating time and space for myself that feel untroubled and mellow (yes, even the eldritch dread of the old gods, I am counting that, too.). Both involve slowing down and being intentional about what I consume, creating comfort through specific, curated experiences.
