My day starts off as any other – I rush through a shower and then approach the mirror with something akin to grim resignation. I open the drawer that holds my complete palette of products designed to highlight my brows, underscore the bags, smooth the wrinkles and create an impish sparkle in my cheeks. Without them I am any other woman approaching middle age, hoping her neck doesn’t sag and that her face doesn’t register grim regret on the reflecting faces around her. I lift my leaden eyebrow to administer eye shadow on the numb side, I smooth it on easily on the other side. I wear more makeup than I ever used to, but then again I have more need.

I dress simply for work – my choices in winter are simple sweater dresses that come an inch above the knee. The jewelry is simple, the perfume light. In summer I wear skirts and short sleeve shirts. My casual life sees only jeans, so that when I am in the office you will never – not ever – catch me in trousers. I can be relaxed enough to segregate parts of my body in private, but at work I need to be so aware that all body parts like to be accessible to each other. I move more fluidly.

Downstairs Alastair has made me coffee in a thermos to take with me. I feign annoyance with him – you should have stayed in bed, you should have kept sleeping. When he takes an early train he does the same admonishments to me, and kisses my forehead, overlooking my unbrushed breath. It’s part of the parlance of a couple, this lecture. Neither of us means it. It’s part of what makes the day what it is – you have an early start so I thought it would be nice to make you a cup of coffee to take with you. Drive safely, stay in touch, and I love you.

The drive to the station has little traffic in the rural lanes. It’s hard to want to fight over a parking space when the sun has barely dusted itself of the sandman from its eyes. The radio is soothingly jangly. I park and walk to the train platform, my thermos of still warm coffee love in my hands. Music is flowing into my ears (the soothing Jonsi). I watch the clouds turn pink and orange and rock on the balls of my feet.

I get to the platform, where I join the throngs. When we reach Waterloo the train will heave us out, one thousand in a swarm seeking out the unknown queen bee. A plane flies low overhead, swollen with people going somewhere other than here. I stand behind businessmen in long dark coats, who themselves have thermos of coffee that presumably their wives made. A woman in front of me has a bag which reads “Make the most of the time you have on earth.” And I wonder if we’re doing what that bag intended. Did that bag mean for us to commute via train into London, awake and alive? Did it picture us hiking in the Kashmiri? Am I supposed to be doing something more altruistic, more giving, instead of what I do? What does the bag want?

Around my ankles, I feel it. It’s slow but it’s there (it’s so very there). Like a parent who thinks they hear their child from their darkened nighttime bedroom, I hold my breath to feel it even more. And yes, there it is. Warmth. Snaking around my ankles, I feel warm.

Tucking my thermos under my arm I take off both of my gloves. My fingers do not turn white immediately, they instead stay a pale pink color. It’s warm enough to not wear gloves. It’s warm. Spring really is coming. I deplore Spring, but I look forward to stripping off the layers and being warm again.

Behind the businessmen with their iPads and their Metros, behind men crunching Blackberry territory and women in running shoes, their heels in their bags, I am taking advice. I breathe in and out, I open the folds of my scarf, I tuck my gloves into my work bag. I forget about the day of meetings ahead, of actions and calls, of trains to catch and of how it seems that every path is the one that leads me home.

And while I get acquainted with the sun and Spring, I make the most of the time I have on earth.

-S

PS – My next In the Powder Room article is up and is (should be!) more on the humorous side.