Feeling Hot Hot Hot

My mother loves bathing in the rain. 
I remember, while growing up, whenever the rain started to pour down in that pull-the-covers-over-your-head, not-moving-from-this-comfy-spot sort of way, she would change into tights and a tee and go walking through the rain.

 Sometimes she would use the time to pull weeds but other times, she would just bask in God's happy tears. She so loved wet days that it always struck me as amazing that her all-time favourite advice for anything that ails you would be to 'take some sun'. 

Now, don't get me wrong; hot days are perfect if you are the ice-cream licking, river/beach/pool going type; and sunlight, in my opinion, beats the hell out of the doom and gloom of a dark and dreary, overcast and ominous day, but Mama took that wholehearted belief in the rejuvenating powers of solar energy to a whole other level.

When my baby was about a weeks old, my mother 'put it to me' that the child needed some sun. She then advised (cough! ordered) me to leave my bed around six-ish  - when the sleep is its sweetest - and swaddle my newborn and take her for a walk in the early morning rays. And, not just once or even once in a while, no...every single morning as long as the rain was not falling. This went on until my baby was about three or four months old. (I think it was her underhanded way of getting me to exercise away the baby weight.) 

When I was young, if we had the flu, she would insist that we leave the loving and revitalizing arms of our beds, where we were comfortably feeling like death, and 'take some sun'. Sometimes she would see something in the rich darkness of our complexion, comment that we looked "peaky" or pale and suggest (and not take no for an answer) that we 'take some sun'. Heaven forbid that we voiced a complaint about not feeling well, be it a headache or hangnail, the remedy was always the same: 'take some sun'.

One of her favourite mandates has always been not to let the sunrise greet us still in bed. Well I think, since they are so buddy-buddy, she should ask it to rise at a decent hour, like 10 o'clock....and while she's at it, she could ask her BFF to chill a bit, 15 million degrees is just showing off.