This is the time of year I begin mourning the inevitable slide of summer into winter. It doesn’t matter that there are easily two more months of oppressive heat left to enjoy. What matters is that as I sit here in my home office with the door to the porch standing open and the dogs panting miserably, all I can think about is how easy it is to navigate a world of warmth and how that’s all going to change a bunch of weeks from now.
Someone once asked me how far out I plan my worries.
“I’m concerned I won’t get into the nursing home of my choice,” I said. I was 26 at the time.
Back then my job was to conduct psychological evaluations in nursing homes, and so I was acutely aware of the wide range of amenities from facility to facility. I was certain that the innumerable faults I found with my 26-year-old body would only be magnified in 60 years’ time, and so a swimming pool was not something I aspired to have. I did want a private room, however, and to be able to bring my two dogs with me. It did not occur to me that they would be in their hundreds by then.
Just as your twenties are perhaps not the most sensible time to be thinking ahead to your declining years, it’s probably not necessary to think about winter in summer. Because as anyone will tell you, anticipating imminent discomfort does not soften discomfort’s blow. It just makes the lead time a whole lot less pleasant.