I Sat in the Car After the Grocery Store and Did Nothing

Dear Delyara, No music. No phone. No air-conditioning. No pretending I was organizing the receipts or answering texts. I just sat there. A cart rolled past. Somebody loaded a stroller. Two teenagers argued by the cart return. The freezer bag with the chicken was sweating on the passenger seat and I still didn’t move. For maybe six minutes, I let the world happen without asking me to interpret it or improve it. I wasn’t a wife or a mother or an employee or the person who remembers everything. I was just a woman in a parking lot breathing. I didn’t realize how much I needed those useless minutes until I felt my shoulders drop on the fourth one. That’s how small relief has become in my life. And how precious.