Soft Grey

It’s cool and rainy and a little grey right now as I write this, but spring grey, soft grey; not the intractable closed-down iron of the winter that’s finally dripped and dragged to an end. Earlier it was short-sleeves-and-sandals weather, and I didn’t even need a hoodie as I got the season’s first cheap red peppers at the Sunday market. All weekend I’ve slept late, dipped bickies into tea, read books as long as I wanted. I’ve had several long satisfying chats on the 80% couches.

Alice and I met at Deluxe this afternoon and walked down Oriental Parade, hoping we had enough time to sit on the little beach there and eat gelato (lemon for me, sour cherry for her) before the southerly we’re supposed to get came through the open arms of the harbour. The sun was out and so was everybody else; I’d run into three people I know at the market. You can’t beat Wellington on a good day, she said.

Yeah, I said, catching a drip before it fell on my arm. It’s just the other eleven months of the year that are rough.

We talked about her acceptance into midwifery school, my job, our Christmas trips we’re taking. Talking about how it’s getting to be the end of the year. This past year was about getting the house in order, we decided, and maybe next year will be about keeping the house. I thought about how all I wanted, when I came back almost two years ago now, was for everything to be stable and secure: for me to go to my job and try to have some sort of career and build up my savings again and hang out with my friends and establish myself, I guess, in Wellington. Maybe not settle down, exactly, because what does that even mean for a person in her getting-to-be-late-thirties who will never have any aspects of the white-picket-fence thing? But lay down a foundation, of sorts. Settle down, maybe not, but settle in, at least. At least a little.

It’s been almost two years, now, and nothing’s been exactly as I thought it would be, and everything’s different, and I no longer know what I want, from anyone or anything.

We talked about this and we talked about that and we talked about the other thing and finally we said what everyone says, swinging our feet over the sand and looking over the water: Oh, everything’s going to be all right. It makes so much sense to believe that on a day like this, when you’ve got your friend and your ice cream cone and your new sandals, when the last couple of days have been free and sweet and slow. Maybe we just need days like this—when nothing’s really happening but everything’s available, when the hours ease gently by and the sun slips seamlessly down.

Maybe it will rain after all, this spring evening, but maybe it won’t. I’m finishing my tea, finding my book, filling up the bath. Thinking and watching and waiting, looking up at the soft grey sky.