The Tab I Finally Closed

October seventh. I had the registration page open for six days.

I want to be precise about that, because the six days is the whole story. The class itself, a Tuesday evening food photography thing at the community center, four sessions, cheap enough that I ran it against the paper number without hesitation, was never really the question. The question was whether I was going to keep performing consideration at myself indefinitely, or whether I was going to notice that I'd already decided and just do the thing.

Simone was at the kitchen table when I finally clicked register. She was there because we'd been doing this thing lately, meeting up after shifts or sessions and sitting at the table with our respective open laptops and occasionally saying something out loud to the room, and I'd been telling myself I was working when mostly I was staring at the same browser tab I'd had open since the week before. When I clicked it I didn't make a production of it. I just said, okay, I did the thing. And she looked up and said, which thing, and I turned the laptop toward her so she could see the confirmation screen. She nodded in this specific way she has that means: obviously, why did that take six days.

The moment I said it out loud.

I asked her if she wanted to sign up too. She said she'd think about it, which I now recognize as the sound of someone who has already decided and is just not ready to say so yet. I left the tab open on my end. The class starts the third week of October.

I don't think this post is about photography or even about cooking. I think it's about the specific feeling of closing a tab you've been keeping open as a placeholder for a decision you already made, the way the screen simplifies when it's just gone, and you realize the deliberation was the last place the doubt was living. Gerald is trailing a new vine over the edge of the counter. The windowsill light this time of year comes in lower and longer. It's October and I registered for a class and I think Simone is going to come too.