Simple Things
Augusta, ME
This post was originally published July 13, 2023.
The sun is shining and the blue sky is mottled with soft white clouds that drift slowly overhead. The food-stained stone picnic table is just warm enough to relax my bones, as I sit and take in the scent of dandelions that the slight breeze carries towards me. The park is filled with dandelions. Small dots of yellow across the dark green grass. I’ve learned that many gardeners don’t like dandelions, but I’m not much of a gardener.
This morning I drank Pumpkin Chai tea, which is one of my favorite kinds of tea. It’s not sold near me this time of year, but last fall I had the foresight to buy extra. Now I drink my favorite tea whenever I want. I pour the water out of my whistling kettle and into a lovely cream-colored ceramic mug. It’s a very country style mug. Simple and elegant. Some of my mugs have cute sayings on them like “Hedgehugs and kisses.” That one features a cuddly looking hedgehog. I like that mug, but I wanted to drink out of my cream-colored one today.
On my way home, I’ll see if the restaurant on my street has changed the quote on their signboard. They change it every couple weeks. I get excited when it changes. Not always, but sometimes the universe synergizes, and the sign will say something I need to read. Regardless, someone is speaking out into the world, and they don’t know it, but I am listening to them. I think that’s kind of cool.
I drop my keys off in a bowl that my friend gifted me from Mexico. It’s a stained wood that matches my aesthetic and the inside has a classic Day of the Dead inspired design in black and white. It sits on a shelf under my grandfather’s hat from Ecuador, and across the room from the large canvas picture I took of Blarney while in Ireland. Sometimes I forget that the world is bigger than the four walls that surround me, but I have these little reminders that it is.
My cat greets me at the door. She’s almost certainly looking for food, but it’s too early for that. I tell her this, but she doesn’t understand. I give her head kisses, and after two years of doing so, she has learned to give me head kisses whenever my head is below hers.
At night, I turn on my fairy lights. The rooms are dark, but little crescent moons and stars hang over the windows. Sometimes I step outside and see the real stars. I forget how big the sky is, when the clouds and city lights aren’t obscuring it.
I light a woodwick candle. The gentle crackling reminds me of cozy campfires and the welcome warmth of the woodstove during cold winters. I hold my hands over the candle when it's cold out. The heat reanimates my frozen fingers. I cozy up next to the sound, deep in my blankets with a book or a tv show. When the wax fills the space between the wick and the glass with liquid, I blow it out, and watch the smoke spiral up in a slow gray mist.
It’s beautiful every time.