The Summer Everything Got Hotter

When perimenopause and climate change collide

St. Joseph River, Indiana; photo by Kristina Galli

I wake with a jolt, eye mask still in place. As consciousness returns, I realize that my body is soaking wet, my cotton t-shirt sticking to my stomach at awkward angles. I remove the satin mask and breathe in through my nose. The cool air against my damp skin rouses me and I tap my phone to see the time. Two-thirty in the morning.

I haven’t slept through the night since having kids a decade ago. My body became programmed irreversibly to middle-of-the-night feedings, then their soft voices whispering Mommy as they peered over me in bed, needing me to soothe them after a bad dream or achy knee. But this is different. The alarm is coming from the inside. It’s like the heat is waking, not me. Sometimes it wakes in broad daylight and I’m overcome by the need to strip and stand under a hose. Instead, I stick my face in the freezer or roll ice cubes against my neck, water cutting rivulets down my sticky back.

It’s July in northern Indiana. The sweet-smelling viburnum and lilac blooms have given way to the hydrangeas—summer show-offs with their bushy bouquets of white. The air no longer light and sweet but hot and heavy, like it’s been trapped in a glass jar and held under a heat lamp. I take the dog out and am greeted by a blast of thick air, forcing me to suck in a short breath. I mentally prepare for the stamina needed to endure our walk.

This can’t be the summer from my youth. The one that meant long days outside and nights without end. Suntanning on a blanket on the lawn. Cut-off jean shorts and thin-strapped tank tops. Hot meant taking a dip in the pool to cool off then letting the sun dry my skin while flipping through the pages of Seventeen magazine. Now, the only way to keep from sweat pouring off my body, soaking the pages of anything I’m attempting to read, is to submerge myself in a tub of ice water.

As the dog sniffs every last bush and plant and piece of trash on the ground, I seek out patches of shade to duck under. The tree limb, the signpost, the stranger’s shadow. The season I most look forward to—the one I meditate on during the long, cold months of winter, when everything turns brown and bare, the ground hard and ice-cracked—has turned into an oppressive tyrant. Is it really getting hotter, or am I? Am I an ant under a threatening microscope of climate change or just an ant with shifting hormone levels?

Scanning the weather news, I read words like extreme, intense, and scorching. Already, California, Nevada, and Connecticut have set all-time record highs for their heat waves. On July 7, 2024, Las Vegas hit its hottest temperature ever recorded: 120 degrees. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts above-normal temperatures for most of the United States this summer. Based on trends tracked by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the United States has gone from experiencing two heat waves per season in the 1960s to more than six in the 2020s, with their duration extending from three to four days. It’s not just me; the earth is getting hotter, too.

During a hot flash, a woman’s body temperature goes up by one to three degrees. Your chest, neck, and face become flushed, your skin blotchy and red. Your heart rate increases. You tug at the neck of your shirt, desperate to circulate the air trapped inside. You wave your hand in front of your face, feeling no relief but continuing despite the futility. You wonder about carrying one of those spray bottle fans in your purse. You hope to god you remembered deodorant.

As my temperatures rise, I know I’m reaching the end of my child-bearing years. My hormones shifting and depleting, no longer needed to sustain fertility. Menopause has long been framed as the end of womanhood. Dried up and infertile, crazed and irrational. The picture of a hunched-over hag, grey hair undyed and untamed, eyes wild and bulging. The aging woman now useless to a society dependent on her to sustain the species.

We call our planet Mother Earth, the Great Mother, Pachamama. While it’s true that the earth nourishes us like a mother, it’s also true that our patriarchal society has feminized her in order to make her subservient to their demands. She is the feminine, meant to be conquered and colonized. Exploited and expended. We dredge her oceans and rake her soil, siphon oil and water and minerals from her core. As her temperatures rise, we face hotter summers, rising sea levels, more destructive and frequent storms. What good is she if she doesn’t give us more and more and more? What good am I?

The dog and I reach the banks of the St. Joseph River. I look north across the water and notice how the maples, oaks, and sycamores create a wall of green. Their foliage arms wrap around me, tuck me in. Beneath my feet, the fleabane decorates the ground in perfect symmetry: white, yellow, white, yellow. The ironweed pricks the sky with purple. The pink-skirted coneflower and sunshine-bursting goldenrod join the summer palette. Their beauty, also medicine.

I look down at my legs, skin-stretched to reveal the veins underneath. My stomach, softer than it used to be. My hairline is damp with sweat and I wipe it with the back of my increasingly crepey hand. I move closer to the old oak towering above me, the top of which I have to crane my neck to see. Her arms are full of green veiny leaves burnt orange on the edges, her brown and purple skin is peeled back in long, jagged strips. I imagine she’s somewhere between fifty to seventy years old. I place my hands on her weathered body, lean mine against it. The dog lays on the grass kept cool by her shade. I notice how the muscles in my legs grow taut, how they contract to hold me upright. How my stomach keeps me steady. Our bodies still full of use, full of life.

A breeze lifts off the water and blows the hair away from my face. I inhale the sweet, loamy air. Thank you, Mother, I whisper to us both.

Kristine Galli is a licensed therapist, writer, and mom. Born and raised in the Bay Area of California, she has been in the Midwest for almost two decades. She earned her Master’s degree at Northwestern University and has been published in Thrive Global, Wellness, and Family Education. She is currently working on her first novel.