My little lights

Since I started renting a few years ago, I have always picked “something” that was important for me to have. In my first apartment, it was critical that I had a guest bathroom even though it was to be a one-bedroom apartment because I didn’t want people visiting my room when they visited. It made me feel exposed. After finding that apartment in Yaba and experiencing Lagos heat while living there, it became important that I had a swimming pool in the next complex I lived in, and in Mauritius I did. I do not remember having any specifications in Oxford except that I wanted to live alone. I ended up in shoebox-sized student housing but I didn’t ‘have’ to share it. When I was apartment hunting in the US, it was important to me that my home have a balcony. It was so important that I opted to live in the suburbs instead of DC itself because the price of apartments with decent-sized balconies in DC was out to wipe me clean. I remember a friend of mine asking why it was so important, I said I wanted to paint on Saturdays. She laughed and she was right, I have not painted a single day in the past 6+ months that I have lived here. In my defense, it has been cold. Fall rolled into winter and Spring took a while to come around truly. But since beginning to mourn my father, I have felt the urgency of everything and so I am now using my balcony.

Death teaches us things. I had so many good intentions and plans that my father never got to experience and it got me thinking that I must love in the moment. If I feel the urge to be kind, I must act on it as soon as I am able but it also got me thinking of all the things I have put on hold for myself in the hope of something in the distant future. I am trying to take care of me now. I go dancing when I can. I drink wine and dance in my living room by myself and express my gratitude to God. I drink wine, I enjoy it, and feel the vibrations of sound as I do. I feel it all. I let myself want things now. My mother encourages me not to let the anxiety of taking care of her take from me the joys of my youth and the enjoyment of my hard work so I am trying these days to do for Mimidoo the things that put a smile on her face.

I have put turf on my balcony. I have put up string lights and a tiny table with 2 chairs. My friends say it reminds them of Paris, I have never been to Paris but I suppose the spirit calls in its own weird way considering I have always wanted to go. When I can, I will put plants, perhaps a small bench where I can pull my feet up and read. I will have tea and read my bible on the balcony in the mornings and work from my Paris-like chairs when I can because I want to feel every moment of my little life and I want to fill it with as much light as I can. Maybe I will do yoga on the balcony too but I surely will drink tea (or wine) there, read, and maybe even have a romantic dinner when my lover finally moves to the US in a few days. I will do these things, not just because I don’t want this grace of a balcony I fought so hard for to go to waste by the time my lease lapses but because there will never be a better time than now to do the things I want to do and live the life I want to.