Popsicles at the End of the World

by CHRISTY TENDING

The world is ending, so we are eating popsicles on the porch.

I am almost through with the day’s horror when it is time to pick up my son at school. I smile, we hug, I tell him I missed him. And he asks me to eat popsicles on the porch. To which I say yes, because his inheritance is a burning thing, a grotesque tangle; I gesture, this will someday be yours.

In my child, the future is already here: the rain boots in the hall, which didn’t get much use during what used to be “the rainy season”; the way we account for risk, which changes every day.

The daily work of climate grief is a heavy, heady slog. We heal, we open again: the daily work of keeping safe. I do not mention the peril of sending him to school. There is risk in being inside—intimacy and a pandemic, hand in hand—so his schools keep the windows open. But when the fires come, which they will again this season, what then? We shut the windows in the house and turn on the air purifiers. He sits by the window, staring through the haze and wondering when he can ride his bicycle again.

My chest tightens when I leave him on the porch by himself. What could happen? My anxiety glowers at me from under my skin, giving me thousands of answers. It clenches its teeth, because I ought to know already. The possibilities splinter, a fractal of devastation: too many children lost in an instant these days. Wait here, I say. Not because I don’t trust him. But because there is creeping dread in letting him out of my sight. I think of the number of parents who did not know it was the last time they would see their children’s faces. Inside, I move quickly. I gasp when I see his face when I open the door again.

I remember—the grief is enormous and his hands are so small. So this is what I do: say yes to popsicles to soothe the ache of a burning world. I put my feet up on the ledge of the porch and let his sweaty head press against my shoulder and watch the bees sip from the orange flowers in the front yard. Every bee, a blessing, an omen. A resistance against collapse and apathy.

The cold trail of juice runs down his arm and he shrieks. He pulls away and there is a shock of relief, the breeze cooling the part of my shoulder where his sticky scalp rested. Our T-shirts soaked through by closeness. I want to pull him back, in time, inward, here, again, more.

I say yes as often as I can. To videos and snuggles and books and just one more. Racing the daylight to the horizon, fitting as much of him into the day as I can. Wasting nothing. Carving every memory into the walls, marking his height on the doorframes. Another popsicle, another game, frantic for as much of it as I can stomach. We shut the shades and turn on the window air conditioner. This is, for now, our bubble against the shifting climate, a makeshift escape from the heat. We set out bowls of ice for the squirrels and count ourselves the luckiest: together, in the cool air, above the sea.

These are the days when time breaks my heart: a home being swept downriver; it will only become more common. The time will come when it won’t matter anymore how deep we have sunk our roots.