It would have been perfect were it not for the stench of my neighbor’s cologne.
It was just after sunset, my feet were bare, my bourbon glass full. It was spring, but the brutal kind with highs already pushing toward 90. Still, the nights were kind. Warm, breezy, largely free of the mosquitoes that I knew would plague us in the months ahead. I turned my face toward the breeze, and then came the assault. The cologne, a frequent pollutant to my outdoor spaces — this stench of a man-child who surely must bathe in the musk of what I can only imagine comes from the nether regions of creatures I’d rather not encounter in a dark alleyway.
I held my ground and shook the stench from my nostrils. I reminded myself of a horse I met once — all head-shaking exhales. Eventually, it — he — relented, freed me of the nasal attack, and went back to his lair. A lair, I’m sure, must reek of the worst kind of man musk.
Freed of the stench, I leaned back in my chair, daring gravity to take me and my bourbon backward. I closed my eyes, listened as the leaves rustled above me, below me, around me. I felt the wind untuck the hair from behind my ears. Felt it brush away the day. I breathed, too — took in the night, the whispers of spring, the sweet blush of lilacs in my yard’s back corner.
I worry that I’m not doing enough. That I’m not spending my time fruitfully enough. That I’m wasting away my days, my minutes, my entire fucking life. Then a friend says, Of course you’re tired, you never stop — and I think, surely that’s not true. You didn’t see the 45 minutes I spent solving the NYT’s sudokus this morning while drinking my coffee and listening to a routine rotation of daily news podcasts. No one else sees those minutes I spend doomscrolling, the time I spend urging myself to fold the laundry or empty the dishwasher, or just do more and more and more.
Then, I flip the coin and worry that I don’t remember how to do less — how to do nothing. How to just exist in a moment without guilt or filling it with an activity, or two, sometimes even three. I wonder if I know how to enjoy moments that don’t correspond to a line item on my to-do list, just waiting to be crossed through once complete.
Sitting there, finally free of the man musk, I thought: Chin up. I lifted my chin skyward, tilted my head back, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I noticed the wind, the way it brushed against my bare arms, the way it shuffled my flyaways and then I exhaled – one. two. three. – and took in the scent of what I decided was a good, good day, cologne pollutants be damned.