The First Pages of June

I watched the rain. The air turns cooler. The light becomes softer and everything feels calm. It makes you want to stay still, to hold a warm cup, to listen, to think, or sometimes not think at all. I let the kids bathe in it. This was on the second day. As they say, you shouldn’t bathe in the very first rainfall because it might give you colds.

I went to school for enrollment of my children. There’s something about schools. It brings back a feeling not of a place, but of a time. The classrooms and the simple act of sitting and watching brings back a feeling of being young when days felt slower and made up of little things. It feels like I am meeting a younger version of myself again, just passing through. While waiting for my son’s kindergarten assessment, I noticed a small bird perched on the screen fence of the H.E. room where we sat. As I got closer, it looked like a baby bird. It stayed there, quietly tweeting, while another bird came from time to time to feed it. After the assessment, we bought watermelon popsicles and bread, then sat on a nearby bench to eat.

I picked some blue wildflowers blooming along the street. I still find myself drawn to wildflowers. haha They feel like they’ve always been part of my childhood. Growing freely everywhere, especially in the places where I used to play outside. I remember picking them without much thought, gathering small bunches just because they were there, and bringing them into the little playhouses we built with friends. We would decorate our make-believe spaces with them, sometimes even pretending to cook them like they were part of our tiny world. Everything felt simple then, full of imagination and small joys.

I draw on a gloomy afternoon. As a child, I would sit with crayons, fill pages with color and get completely lost in my own little world of imagination. On these gloomy days, it reminds me of that same feeling. To just draw freely, without pressure or the need for a perfect concept. No expectations, no overthinking. Just the quiet joy of creating. The freedom to make art simply because it feels good.

I watched few movies. I grew up in a time when we didn’t have full access to television. Only a few houses in the neighborhood had one, so my friends and I would gather together just to watch an episode, sometimes at our home, sometimes at theirs. We rarely got to watch a full movie at once. Instead, we followed stories through scheduled broadcasts, filled with long advertisements we couldn’t skip, always waiting for the next episode to continue the story. We experienced everything together. Waiting, guessing what would happen next, laughing at the funny parts, or getting emotional over the sad ones. It was simple, but it felt special. 

I painted my nails. Something I used to do as a child. Without much preparation, I painted them simply, like I did back then and it made me happy. 🙂

I meditated and spent time in quiet and silence. The world has been moving so fast, filled with so much noise that I almost forgot how to just breathe. These cold, slow days gave me a chance to sit and to pause and to not think about anything in particular. I wondered what difference it would make sitting for 30 minutes in silence. I did on the sofa, in the kitchen, in a quiet corner, even in the backyard. Just sitting, just being.

It reminded me of how I grew up on the mountainside, where everything felt peaceful and gentle. The quiet there was natural, soft and comforting to the mind. Even now that I still live on a mountainside, just in a different province. Here, the sound of passing vehicles, music from nearby houses and the weight of adulthood somehow fill the space.

And yet, in those moments of silence, I felt something familiar return. A sense of calm I used to know so well.Maybe it’s something I have to relearn. To give myself that stillness again, to rewire my mind and to allow space for peace.

Because in the end, it’s something I’ve always deserved… even if I forget sometimes. 😀