The Window Was Already Open

May nineteenth. At some point around seven I woke up and the apartment smelled different. Not bad-different, not something-is-wrong-different, just the specific smell of air that has been outside all night and is now coming in through a gap I favorite left before I went to sleep. Spring, finally doing the thing spring is supposed to do.

I made coffee and I sat in the chair by the window and I did not do anything for a long time. Not a reading kind of sitting, not a phone kind of sitting. Just the steam from the mug and the light coming in at that low morning angle that hits the windowsill and makes the collapsed bowl look like it has an interior glow it definitely does not have. The two photographs caught the same light. The small object Carol sent did too, in its way. I have looked at that arrangement so many times that I don't usually actually see it, but this morning I did.

The windowsill in May light.

The outdoor skills workshop is in three weeks. I registered mid-week in April and then mostly stopped thinking about it, which is how I know it was actually the right call, the things I second-guess are the things I'm still talking myself into. I'm not talking myself into anything right now. I'm sitting in a chair with the window open and the light doing what it's going to do regardless.

There is something specifically good about the first morning of the year where you can leave a window open and it feels like the right temperature rather than a choice you're making for your own character. This was that morning. I stayed in the chair until the coffee was gone and then I stayed a little longer.