The Three Seconds Before You Know What Your Face Is Doing

May seventeenth.

Somebody said "we have an announcement" and I did that thing where your stomach does a full rotation before your brain has caught up. The table went quiet for maybe two seconds, the particular quiet of a group of people who have all just agreed to hold very still, and then everything broke open at once. I am pretty sure I knocked over a water glass. I am one hundred percent sure I did not have a dignified expression on my face during the reveal. That's fine. I've decided that's the correct response.

It was one of those afternoons that doesn't feel like it belongs to the usual week. The restaurant was the kind of place that fills up slowly on a Friday, mismatched chairs, windows that let in more light than you expect, and we stayed so long the lunch crowd turned into the early dinner crowd and we barely noticed. I kept thinking about Carol's card sitting on my kitchen counter, and the community center brochure still within arm's reach of Gerald, and how much of my life right now is things-I-am-circling-at-low-altitude. And then someone across the table says a sentence and the whole afternoon just lands differently. That's the thing about other people's good news: it doesn't fix anything about your own open questions, but it makes them feel less heavy for a while.

The quiet moment after the loud one.

Walked back to my car in the late afternoon and just stood outside for a minute before getting in. Not for any particular reason. Just because the light was doing something nice and I wasn't ready to be in a car yet. Spring in May has its own specific quality, the air warm enough that you don't need the jacket but cool enough that you notice you're not cold, and I wanted to stay in it a little longer.

Still processing it on the way to the car.

Hopeful is the word for it, I think. Not my hope exactly. More like borrowed hope, which is maybe the best kind because you didn't have to earn it and you can just carry it around for a day or two until it settles into something quieter.