Sitting there on your window seat, you raise the sash and press your nose to the screen. A coolness wafts over your face, and you inhale it deeply.

 

You find something delicious in this first crispness to enter summer’s breezes. You know it’s not here to stay just yet, but that quality of air does something, somehow embodies everything that has ever meant anything to you. Especially you who grew up with a leaf-changing, puddle-splashing autumn, or always wished you had. Yes, a single breath of this wind holds an entire childhood…it’s breathing in the steam that rises from piping hot cider; it’s apple-picking, pumpkin-carving, jumping into leaf piles…it’s the smell of new denim and pencils, a crisp class schedule in hand and chalkboard up front, of warm sourdough bread and deep bowls of creamy chicken with rice soup…it’s nestling a nose into a fuzzy turtleneck, cocooning inside a dear quilt with low-lighting and the yellowed pages of an old novel found on the shelf…

 

You step away from the window to fetch your favorite cardigan, that oversized one you snagged from Dad ages ago with the suede patches on the elbows, the cable-knit one that’s pilled to perfection. And on your way back from the closet, you veer into the kitchen to snap your gas stove into life, plonking a pot over its blossom of blue flame as you scavenge the cans of your cupboard for just the right potage to grace your cozy comfort cup…the mug that leaves itself wide open like a warm hug and always lets you hover over it to inhale its cappuccinos or its broccoli cheddars.

 

A brisk draft of air drifts in to meet you there, to peek over your shoulder and see what soup’s on. It carries upon its current the histories of a thousand civilizations and the memories of a single lifetime, bundled in all the promise of what lies ahead, and your lungs cannot fill with enough of it.