Dear Lili,
I’m sorry we are raising you in an apartment that reaches temperatures equivalent to the Arizona desert in July. It’s part of growing up in an old Brooklyn brownstone. We are unable to control the heat at any time of the day or night and spend most winters as a family with a dull, dry cough and nasal passages so barren of moisture a sneeze no longer sounds like a sneeze.
At night – while your father and I are in bed – sizzlin’ away like a couple of London Broils on an open flame – you are often in your crib sweating up a storm. Most mornings when we come to check on you – your hair is so wet with sweat that it appears you have just showered and/or cramping Michael Douglas’s look from the movie Wall Street. Either one.
This is such a far cry from the way I grew up. My house as a kid was constantly FREEZING. We had a gigantic old Victorian house where winters meant seeing your breath and only on special occasions (holidays) could we turn the heat on which meant wearing two sweatshirts instead of our normal four.
I have yet to try a humidifier in the apartment in fear of festering mold – I hear they are bad for allergy people like us. Who knows. But it may be time. Why? Because we have taken to calling you ‘little sweat box’ which of all the adoring nicknames a parent might call their child perhaps…may not be in the top ten.
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