I looked down the old and dusty road I drive home today and for the first time saw that it was summer.
All around me the vineyards were green and exploding with life and the evening was warm and the sun was setting slow and late behind the jagged mountains that flank us.
I shopped in my shorts for the week’s groceries and instead of rushing around the store to get all the stuff on our list as quickly as possible, I just walked between the aisles and watched the sparrows that nest in the ceiling swooping around the Pick ‘n Pay, free.
I listened to old Kings Of Leon after supper and remembered what summer is like back up in Joburg. The smell of freshly cut grass on a sweltering day, the feel of your fingers pruning because you’ve been swimming too long. Coke fizzing up with ice.
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to be living, who I’m supposed to be hanging out with, what I’m supposed to be wearing or saying or thinking or doing. I don’t know if I’ve got it all figured out, I don’t know that I’ve got anything figured out, but I know that there’s something in a summer day that somehow makes every single damn thing worth it.
Tonight I’ll hold my girlfriend, warm, sweet-smelling and beautiful, and we’ll drift off to sleep together and we’ll be happy.
It’s my birthday on Wednesday, I’ll be 27 years old and while I ain’t changed, I know I ain’t the same
I hope it’s a sunny day on Wednesday, that’s all I want for my birthday. That and to wake up next to her.
The small things.
-ST
