Popsicles and Patience

It was so hot I could feel my eyelashes sweating.

The AC was broken. Again. The repair guy said he “might” show up tomorrow, which in our neighborhood meant next week. So we opened the windows, turned on every fan we owned, and prayed for a breeze.

“Don’t just sit there melting,” my aunt called out. “If we’re gonna sweat, we might as well make the house sparkle.”

And just like that, heatwave cleaning day was born.

We all moved like slow-motion swimmers. I was wiping down kitchen cabinets with lemon vinegar, while my cousin Julian used a spray bottle to mist his own face more than the furniture. My younger sister played DJ and blasted summer throwbacks that made us move even if we didn’t want to.

Mom came in with a tray full of icy hibiscus punch and handed us each a glass like it was sacred. “Stay hydrated,” she said. “And take a break every 20 minutes.”

That became the rhythm: clean, sip, fan yourself, repeat.

The heat made everything feel heavier, including the moods. But somehow, cleaning helped. There was something about dusting the corners of a windowsill while laughing about who snuck the last pickle from the fridge. There was something healing about it.

“You know,” Auntie said as we scrubbed the kitchen floor, “sweat is just your body’s way of releasing the nonsense.”

“I thought that was crying,” Julian replied.

“Same thing sometimes,” she shrugged.

Around 4 PM, when the sun hit its peak and even the mop was wilting, Grandma came in clutch with a tray full of homemade frozen fruit bars—strawberry-lime, mango-coconut, and watermelon-mint. She said it was too hot for heavy food, so frozen fun was the only answer.

We all gathered in the living room, fans pointed in every direction, legs stretched out, clothes sticking to us, faces glowing. We sucked on popsicles and told stories that had no point, just punchlines. Someone passed around a spray bottle and we misted each other between bites like tropical royalty.

The house was cleaner, sure. But more importantly, it felt alive. Like we had scrubbed not just grime but irritation, loneliness, and stress right off the walls.

I looked around at my family—flawed, loud, sweaty, full of jokes and popsicle juice—and thought, This is it. This is beauty. Not the airbrushed, flawless kind. The real kind. The kind that looks like togetherness and tastes like mango melting down your hand.

Later, when the sun finally dropped behind the trees, we all dragged blankets out to the porch. We laid down side by side, bellies full of frozen fruit and peace.

“Today was a mess,” Julian said.

“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “A perfect one.”