The Tab Stayed Open

May tenth. The Saturday came. That is really the whole story, but I'll write it out anyway because the alternative was a post about the tab closing itself, and that post would have been honest too, just shorter.

Simone mentioned the botanical dyeing demonstration the way she mentions things now, without appending 'we should,' just naming it and putting on her jacket. I wrote about that texture in April. What I didn't write was whether I'd actually go, because I hadn't decided yet. I kept the community center page open in my browser the same way I kept the pottery registration open in March 2015, the same way I kept the class page open last summer before I finally named the not-registering as the answer. I know my own patterns by now. The tab either closes on its own schedule or it turns into a Saturday.

This one turned into a Saturday.

We stood at long folding tables with dropcloths and shallow plastic tubs and small sorted piles of dried onion skins. The woman running it was matter-of-fact in the way people are when they know their material well enough to stop performing enthusiasm about it. You put the fabric in. The color is already in the water. You lift it out and see what you got. I lifted out a square of pale fabric and it had turned a color I can only describe as pale gold, translucent, like light through very thin paper.

After. Just looking at it.

I had not made that color. I had only been in the room when the onion skins made it. That distinction felt important and I haven't fully worked out why yet.

Simone said something at the table that I smiled at, and someone photographed that moment with the timer on the far end, and I'm including it here because the expression on my face is the most accurate record I have of the afternoon. Not the fabric, not the tub. Just: she said something and I was there. The tab stayed open. Then it became a Saturday. I don't know yet whether I'll do it again, and I'm not going to decide tonight, which is itself probably already the answer accumulating.