This Place: Stories Imagined - Story Two - Waiting

By the time I arrive, the day has already decided what it’s going to be.

The light is thin and undecided, the sort that makes everything feel provisional. I check the time twice, once on my phone, once by habit, as if it might have changed while I wasn’t looking. It hasn’t.

January always does this to me ... it stretches things out. It asks for patience and offers no proof it will be rewarded.

I arrive with lists forming themselves faster than I can write them down, and leave with fewer answers than I’d planned for.

There’s mud on my boots before I reach the door - of course there is! I hesitate, consider wiping them properly, then don’t. The floor will survive ... everything here usually does.

Inside, the air smells of damp wool and tea gone slightly bitter. Someone has already started the day and I feel the familiar tug of relief and irritation ... grateful not to be first, unsettled not to be ahead.

I notice the crate immediately - pushed to the side, unopened. It’s the sort of thing I can’t help but catalogue mentally, the way it sits just out of the way, waiting to be decided. I tell myself there’s no rush but I don’t believe it.

There’s talk, later, about how short the days still are. Someone says it’s too early to see anything yet. I nod, because that’s the correct shape for a response, but part of me is already counting weeks, imagining green where there is only brown and wondering, not for the first time, whether patience is learned or inherited.

I move through this place with a sense of forward lean, not rushing, exactly, but never quite still. I'm always anticipating the next thing, the next decision, the thing that will require attention once this is dealt with. It’s a habit, and a useful one ... mostly.

Outside, the trees stand bare against the sky. Honest, perhaps. Exposed, certainly. I know this is meant to be reassuring, growth stripped back to structure, but it makes me uneasy. I want evidence ... leaves and buds, something to suggest we’re not simply circling the same ground.

Someone crosses the yard and we exchange a nod ... efficient, polite. I wonder what registers - competence, maybe? Purpose? I hope it’s not the flicker of uncertainty I feel tightening just under the surface.

The radio is on somewhere, low and indistinct. Voices talking about weather, about plans, about what’s coming next. I half-listen and half-argue with it in my head. There is always something coming next ... the problem is living in the meantime.

By midday, I’m aware of how much thinking I’ve done and how little of it has solidified into action. January has a way of exposing that ... the difference between movement and momentum.

A single glove sits abandoned on a bench. I pick it up, turn it over once, then place it somewhere sensible. The small satisfaction this gives me is disproportionate, which I take as a sign I should probably stop counting such things.

At the edge of the field, I pause, less because I want to, more because it feels expected. The place is quiet in that winter way that isn’t peaceful so much as contained. As if it’s holding something back, waiting to see who will notice.

That, I think, is what unsettles me most. Not the waiting itself, but the sense that something is already happening, just out of sight ... that progress has decided to move without witnesses.

As afternoon thins, the light gives up early. I make notes for later like I always do. Plans nested inside other plans, spring pencilled in lightly, like something that might still change its mind.

When it’s time to leave, I hesitate at the door. There’s more I could do as there always is but the day has drawn its boundaries, and I’ve learned, slowly, that January does not respond well to negotiation.

I pull my coat tighter and step back into the cold, already rehearsing tomorrow.

Behind me, the crate remains unopened and I tell myself that’s fine, that not everything needs to happen at once.

I don’t turn back which feels, suddenly, like a decision.

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Next week: the same day, seen through different eyes.