The first warm day of Spring I got in the car and drove to the bistro. It wasn’t about the food, but it was the overwhelming urge to grab a coffee not brewed by me and sit outside in the sun. It was also lovely to just sit alone.

I went in and ordered the most complex drink I could think of and smiled as I carried it outside and sank down onto one of the comfortable wrought iron chairs and just sighed with the pure pleasure of feeling the winter days ebbing. There were small birds hopping around in between the table legs, scrounging for any scraps inadvertently dropped, and I smiled as I watched them scrabble for what they could find, squabbling with each other when one of them managed to nab a speck of croissant or muffin.

I was overwhelmed with a sense of pure delight that we had made it through the past year of the pandemic quarantine. My husband and I are, by nature, extroverts and comfortable with each other and with long weeks of reading and doing simple little things that broke up our days. But oh! How I had missed seeing the faces of other people and sitting and observing the rhythms of life. I thought how small pleasures could take on such importance when one has been denied those things for months and months; a cup of coffee, the sun on my face, a bevy of pecking birds.