The tea steams from a mug resting on the round coaster. The mug, is cream colored with red, green and ice blue stars in the shape of that character above the number 8 on your keyboard, that are supposed to represent snowflakes. It was a gift from a co-worker several years ago during a Secret Santa swap. The coaster is an old purple CD that has been scratched over the years. The thought to replace it with something a little classier surfaces every once in a while, but it's a fleeting thought, and soon forgotten. It doesn't seem right to call it tea, she thinks, after all it's not made from tea leaves. A bunch of herbs dried up and passed off as tea hardly fits the bill when you are looking for something soothing at the end of a long and trying day. The best that it offers is it's temperature. Something warm to wrap your cold hands around, or a bit of heat to sooth your raw and tired throat. What it lacks is that old comfort that is drawn from a familiar taste. A blend of leaves mixed in with a bit of sugar and touch of cream that registers in your memory as relaxation.
Her attention turns towards the window. The late afternoon sunshine seeps through the slatted wooden blinds. The leaves on the trees are getting bigger now, larger than the buds that were out there just a month ago. It's windy today, and the branches bend and sway and dance from side to side. Across the yard sits the little pink birdhouse, faded from years of hanging out in the sun. A pair of Chickadees built a nest in it this spring, and she wonders if the eggs have hatched like the ones of the Common Red-poles above the front door post. She watches the traffic drive past the town common for a few minutes. Her thoughts drift off to how many hours she has stared out this same window over the past years. Lost in her own dark thoughts, tears streaming down her face. How many times she sat in this same chair during what should've been a two way conversation, staring out that window while she waited for a response, or an answer, or anything at all.
Her gaze turns to the empty chair next to the table that serves as her desk. The one that her daughter still uses at the old computer desk. The one that he comes in and turns so that he can talk to her in the morning after he arises Or if she's been working at her computer or the desk and he arrives home and wants to check in with her. The one where he sits down, after having turned the chair around, and takes her two hands and gives her his full attention. She thinks of how far they have come in the past few months, and how sometimes all you can do is appreciate what you have and not dwell on what you are lacking. Her eyes glance up at the sticky note that she has taped to the wall under the photo of the trail that she first started running on. A bright yellow note, with the words "good morning beutifull I love you." penned in black ink. (spelling has been left as is). The note she found stuck to her laptop early one Saturday morning after she awoke. On a morning when he had been up till the early hours playing video games with his brothers and friends and she knew he wouldn't be up until very late morning at best. A note, that brought a smile to her face and reminded her why she fell in love with him all those years before.
