The Morning the Air Gets Lighter

I don’t know when it will happen. I only know that it will be an ordinary morning.

No holiday, no sea view, no special occasion. The same alarm, the same kitchen, the same balcony. And yet, from the very first breath, something will be different. The air will be lighter. Not outside. Inside. As if someone quietly opened a window in me that has been shut for years.

I think about that morning more often than anyone knows. I have imagined it so many times that I could walk through it with my eyes closed.

Waking up

It begins before I open my eyes.

On that morning, my first thought won’t be a list. It won’t be the familiar heaviness that arrives a second before I’m fully awake, already waiting for me at the edge of the bed. My body won’t be braced. My shoulders won’t already be up near my ears. I’ll just wake up, the way people do in films, and lie there for a moment because there is no reason to hurry.

And then I’ll get up. Not because I have to. Because I want coffee.

The coffee

I’ll make it slowly.

I’ll take the good cup, the one I usually save for no reason at all. I’ll wait for the smell to fill the kitchen, that warm, dark, early smell that tells the whole house the day has begun. And when I take the first sip, it will taste like coffee again. Not like fuel. Not like something I drink standing up between two tasks. Like coffee. Like something made for me.

Tobby

Of course, I won’t be alone.

The moment I open the balcony door, Tobby will be there. He hears that door from anywhere in the house. He’ll walk out ahead of me as if it were his idea, choose his spot with great seriousness, and lie down exactly on my foot, because in his opinion my foot is the most comfortable place in the world and it belongs to him anyway.

He’ll lift his nose to the air and start reading it, the way he does every morning. Who passed by in the night. Which neighbour is baking. Whether there might be a cat somewhere he will never catch. His nose working like a little newspaper. And then he’ll let out one long, dramatic sigh, the sigh of a dog who has everything he needs, and close his eyes.

I’ll put my hand on his warm head. And for once I won’t be thinking about anything else.

The air

The city will still be half asleep. A few birds arguing somewhere. A car far away. The light not yet sharp, still soft at the edges, the way it is only for a few minutes before the day takes over.

The air will be cool and clean, and I’ll breathe it in all the way, the way I haven’t breathed in years. Not a shallow, careful breath, but a whole one. The kind you don’t have to think about.

That’s all. That’s the whole morning. A cup, a dog, a balcony, the air.

Why it needs nothing special

What I’ve finally understood is that this morning doesn’t need anything I don’t already have.

I have the balcony. I have the cup. I have Tobby, every single day, lying on my foot without being asked. The morning I’m waiting for is not somewhere far away. It is right here, in my own home, waiting for only one thing: for the peace to come back inside me.

When it does, the same balcony will feel like the best place on earth. And I think I’ll notice it first by the air. By how easy it suddenly is to breathe.

Until then

Today the air is still heavy. I know that. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

But some mornings I go out onto the balcony anyway, with whatever coffee I’ve managed to make, and Tobby comes and lies on my foot, and I stand there and practise. I imagine how it will feel. I rehearse the breath.

So that when that morning finally comes, I will recognise it at once.

What would your lighter morning look like? You don’t need to describe all of it. One small detail is enough.

With love, from HerWay

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