Montreal.
It was raining that morning when she got up in the dim morning hours, completely alone in the spacious apartment with wooden floors, an apartment that would hug a person in their 20s perfectly; simple fire place, a stove for morning coffee, and creaking windows to light up the dusty corners. Bare foot and oversized t-shirt, she walks across the floors to the open kitchen while the sun is slowly awakening through the raining sky.
Long, curly chocolate hair, she was free in her solitude, free in this space so silent amidst the bustling energy of Montreal city’s slowly fading summer. Her feet were feeling the cold for the first time, not really observing the change in seasons but being a part of it instead, part of the expected change.
The morning is early but she has work to do, so she fills up the kettle and puts it on the stove, ready to brew morning coffee, an aroma that never fails to bring the warmth of past memories into sensation, silent mornings just like this one, alone or not, where the scent of coffee mixes perfectly with the morning silence.
The quietness could be frightening, for there’s not another soul to be heard in these early hours, just her, hugging her bare legs while sitting at the small wooden dining table, big enough for two. She waits while the water boils, and stares out towards the trees that are slowly losing their leaves, the rain falling so effortlessly.
But she’s not scared by this silence, no, she watches it all with sharp eyes; the falling rain a guided mediation, a simmering mind quietly watching it all, in no rush to start the day of life’s many engagements, all so sweet if you know how to taste it, all so hilarious if you know how to laugh with it. A time for rest, practice to steer the day’s noise and rush and obligations into a path of easefulness, a constant battle that will inevitably come with engagement, but to hide from it? No. She sits there in practice, knees vulnerable but eyes both eager and calm; a watchfulness charm.
Her eye catches the ruffled white sheets in her bedroom, reminding her that just days before, her boyfriend lay fast asleep while she tip-toed around the apartment getting the coffee aroma started for the day. What a new face he was to her these past four months, stepping into a foreign city only to find a friend, someone to experience moments filled with laughter, of silliness, talks of life’s truths, truths that they first saw in each others eyes when they first started to unfold one another. Moments sitting on the floor of an Indian restaurant, hands dipped in spices, to moments making dinner together in a wooden floored apartment, allowing them to understand the way one tosses the frying pan, to talk about what groceries are needed for tonight’s dinner- perhaps some more avocado and blue cheese for the salad.
She remembers creeping back into his arms after turning on the coffee maker, melting yet again into a blissful state of sleep, legs turning under the covers further taking from each other’s warm presence. She remembers drifting off into the morning silence, the brewing smell of coffee, only to feel his hands pull her closely in. Both are still in a sleepy state in the dim light of the morning when she hears him jokingly mumble “Babyyyy, be my wife, we can do this foreverr”. She laughs at this memory, of the ridiculous fantasy of such a place in time, the thought of being in his arms, forever. The same jokes that never seems to fail to rise to the surface, to poke at her with such silly possibilities, to make their young eyes wonder.
Sitting at the table, her eyes stay with the rain and it is in this moment she feels him, feels an accumulation of all of their moments, silly fantasies and all, and finds herself being consumed in a single moment of silence, a single feeling of clarity of the union between her, and him. It was a glimpse of the truth that forever lies beneath it all but is always fleeting, showing its face from time to time just for you to understand each other’s place in a dance that we both have created. It’s a clarity that often gets muffled by sloth-like atmospheres created by a stressful week of university essays, or gets lost between the silly mumble of words that are exchanged between each other’s mouths, the zone of comfortableness that can lead to not a numbing, but rather “out-of-sight” clarity of the naked love we have for each other, bare skin glowing.
No, this wasn’t a moment of day-dreaming, where one gets lost in a place in the mind that fathoms a reality without solid basis, or wispy thoughts of a cloudy romance. It was a glimpse that only such quietness can bring, revealing herself not in context of her and this man, but her in this wooden-floored apartment, in this new city that’s slowly becoming home, her place in time as a woman in her early twenties, naive and vulnerable in an ever turning world, college years that gratefully bring coffee infused mornings and friendships filled with tears and laughter. Her and her mind both stepped back and observed, and then the thought consumed her, “A guy sure loves a girl, who walks barefoot over creaking wooden floors to brew the smell of morning coffee.”
She gets up from the dining table, the coffee is ready. She can feel the seasons change now, the crisper air and the falling of leaves; she’s aware of her place and part in the changing of seasons, it’s clear. Coffee in hand, she happens to fold her right hand over her heart, keeping this morning to safely rest within her. She knows the seasons change, and so will the silence, but she will not forget it.
A few mornings later she happens to wake up in his arms again, bodies pressed together and warm beneath the sheets. She couldn’t think of a reason why she would be anywhere else other than where she was in that moment, why she wouldn’t want to be completely vulnerable to any awaiting experience. A familiar silence could be heard brewing, and then out of nowhere, the inevitable colors of the sky began to change. Melting into such changing cycles is always the challenge, but then, just as they both looked up, the snow began to fall.
For the first time, they experienced the silence of the snow, together.
