I stepped outside.

On remembering that this is good.

It's nothing new, but I was walking by the neighbor’s on Chorro and happened to breathe. He was watering the front yard, and the air mixed into the diffused spray and smelled like summer. Summer of my youth when I still had Saturday chores like watering the roses in front and trumpet vines in back. When I’d leave the hose running and walk away because watering things takes too long. I always loved how it kept dribbling after I turned it off, as I wound it up into a coil with the clunky plastic lever. How at the end  it always left an art piece on the cement and if I moved quickly enough I could be a part of creating its final form as it sank, against all odds, into the patio and watch as it lifted back out again.

I was walking on Chorro and I breathed. I’d had a disappointing day where all I did was fix a bike tube and lay on the ground for hours organizing my saved posts on Instagram. My brain was numb, my thumb tired. And I set out with my shoulder bag to return some miso and a sourdough starter. The lyrics said “this one’s for the lonely child / broken hearted / running wild.” And I breathed in the scent of wet roots and pavement, as it mingled with the coastal evening breeze.

Taking me back to summer of my youth, when the sprinklers run in the morning and never stay in the lines. When I was chilled to the bone come late afternoon, standing in the wind rushing up Poinsettia, wishing I could will it away. Because it's supposed to be summer and I simply don’t want to be cold right now. I know you wouldn’t think it – silly girl in a green mini skirt and thin scarf wrapped around as a jacket. Back then it was usually shorts and a t-shirt, which makes me wonder if things ever really change. Or if they do, if it's my right to witness any of it.

I breathed in the damp air and felt something unmistakably pure. And for a moment I let it be everything I needed. These are the gifts I’m always talking about, so easy to discard for their brevity. It lasted only one, measly big breath before it was gone. 

But afterwards I felt a couple seconds lighter, a single breath more hopeful.

I started singing quietly along, turned the corner and a woman smiled at me from half a block away. I said hello and smiled back. “This is so you’ll know the sound / of someone who loves you.” I don’t remember feeling lonely back then, but these days I don’t trust memory much. Studies show we’re unreliable. So if I’m lonely now, I’m lonely still. Barefoot, kneeling, picking cherry tomatoes from the vine for dinner, filling my nose with their earthy green. 

I dropped off the miso and starter, went on about how everything is the same and there are no new words. But maybe I’m more okay with that than I was before. Could be the water talking. Because I breathed and saw my dad washing the car, my little legs running alongside the soapy water – running downhill along the curb to the gutter a block down. Around the bend I’d run to see how far it could go this time.

Later on a cute guy recognized me and finally tried to make conversation while I counted my money. I got nervous and didn’t say too much but felt pleased. I walked home a different way and someone was taking a photo at one of my favorite spots in town – it looked especially beautiful tonight, the setting sun illuminating the dry hills behind.

It’s summer and everything is turning brown.

I love that. 

I think because it reminds me that this, too, is good.

I’d guess we all need more of that. 

As I said, it's nothing new. But I got home and felt mostly unchanged. I looked in the mirror and saw a girl wearing the same clothes as yesterday, almost the same as the day before and the day before that. So I finally took them off and started writing and felt glad. All it takes is one breath to shift perspective, make contentment feel easier. Nothing big, just a little different. But it's nothing to trifle with. Because once it's gone, that memory will never be as it was again. 

My trash can is a brown paper lunch bag, size 12. I haven’t emptied it in two months. I quite like it – sitting there by the bedroom door, on top of my sewing machine. I folded down the upper edge a couple times to make it more stable, more fashionable. It suits this tiny room of mine. Like a peach pit in the backyard in summertime, under the shade of the tree where the girl walks away with the hose still running.

xx