The Tea Was Still There When I Hung Up

Sunday morning. I called my grandmother before I'd properly woken up, the kind of call where you settle into the kitchen chair and forty minutes go by without you noticing. She talked about the weather where she is. I talked about nothing much. We talked about something she found in a box last week, and then she described it for five minutes in that specific way she has, where every detail is given equal weight, the color, the smell, the size of it relative to her palm. I forgot to drink my tea.

I looked at the mug after I hung up and the tea had gone the exact shade that means it's been sitting for a while. There's something about that particular color, or maybe just the specific situation of it, the full mug you made with intention and then forgot entirely because you were somewhere else, that feels like a small honest report on how the call went. It went well. I was somewhere else. The tea is evidence.

the tea. the whole conversation. the tea.

This is the part that gets me, a little, about living at the distance I do: the call ends and you're immediately back in your own kitchen, which is fine and familiar and yours, but for a minute it doesn't quite fit right. I looked at the windowsill after I hung up, the cord, the photographs, the small object Carol sent, all of it in low fall light, and it helped, the way it usually does, for reasons I've written around enough times that I don't need to explain them anymore.

the windowsill holds the same things it always holds. somehow that helps.

The apartment is the apartment. The call was a good one. The tea was exactly where I left it.