There isn’t always something positive about every situation but something to be grateful for every day.
This piece was originally published on April 16, 2019, when there were no travel restrictions due to the CoronaVirus.
I’m in Cambridge with my 16-year-old daughter, she is attending a course. As I wake her up this morning, being my cheerful and chipper self, she mumbles from underneath her duvet “oh mom, how can you be so happy in the morning!”. I give her a kiss and tell that I mostly wake up happy, it is a new day and a new beginning and anything can happen. You never know I say, but if I’m in a bad mood it is normally something that happens at that moment. Then I carry on, sounding like one of the little birds outside announcing spring is here, probably a little annoying to my wonderful teen. She stayed up late studying and most likely also netflixing…. “You know what?” I ask her, “While you get dressed I’m going to pop over to our favourite coffee place and get you a cappuccino, “you deserve to be spoiled, you are working so hard”.
As I walk over to “our” coffee place the ice-cold UK spring wind bits my face and hands, I walk as quickly as I can with the broken disc I have in my back to get to the shelter of the coffee shop. There are a few other morning people in there and I notice they all bring their own cup. Oh how wonderful I think, they are all taking care of mother earth, I turn around and thank the man beside me, “how wonderful it is that you are bringing your own cup” he smiles at me, a bit awkwardly and answers with a sparkle in his eyes. Another lady walks in with her own cup, “Oh how wonderful” I say to the man next to me, ‘there is another one bringing her own cup’ he looks at me like I’m one of these strange middle aged women that talks to strangers… and he is right, I’m.
We are in an Airbnb rental, it is one of those apartments that has been bought as an investment to rent in Airbnb, It is run by an agency that has no care for the place or for the customers. It has the potential to be the perfect place, it is well located and charming, but the bare minimum is applied everywhere and obviously, no one has lived here to test things like water pressure, heating and the kitchen. The kitchen was dirty when we arrived, oven disgusting (to be frank) the kitchen floor sticky and the appliances old and run down. The marking on the electric cooker and the microwave has been scrubbed off, so I used the trial and error to get it working and the electrical plates are full of rust. I find at floor mop and clean the kitchen floor. The heating is programmed to 16 degrees; I’m instructed by the agency to press on the arrows on devices that control the heating. I do but as it is pre-programmed it goes back to 16 degrees after a little while. In the morning the apartment is freezing and with the water pressure being so low having a shower is a very cold experience. So I decided to put my alarm to 6 am in the morning to get up and get the heating working for an hour, so the house is nice and warm when we have to get up. One evening we have no hot water but I manage to fix it and a parking permit was included in the rental but as the previous tenant took it by mistake, I don’t get one. Compensation is offered on the cleaning but like everything else in this place, minimum effort is applied.
As I talked to the agency I can feel my inner spring ready bird beginning to sing a little less cheerful and I get ever so tired. I have a few uphill challenges in my personal life at the moment and this is not what I expected for my daughter and my stay in Cambridge.
And then I have to go and get my wonderful teen; I look forward to picking her up from school. On the way there I walk by the most beautiful tree, it is full of pale pink flowers and it has nice sent of anise to it. Behind it is a bright blue door and the pale pink looks even more beautiful with the bright blue door behind it. I decide to stand there a moment I even take a picture or five. And then I become ever so grateful, grateful that someone planted this beautiful tree, grateful that someone painted the door in bright blue, grateful that I’m in Cambridge with my daughter, grateful that we have the money to send her on a course, grateful I have the time to go with her, grateful that there is a little bird singing and grateful that the bird gets my inner bird to sing and be cheerful again.
This is not to be confused with finding something positive with everything, because as I said in my blog last week (to be or not to be okay all the time) sometimes there is nothing positive about a given situation. At the same time, I have found that most times I can find something to be grateful for in every day, and there are days when that begins by being grateful for having coffee and milk in my kitchen. When I have a challenging time I begin every morning before I get up by finding at least three things I’m grateful for and funny enough we get more of what we focus on, so it quickly becomes easier to find more and more things to be grateful for and as such that makes me very happy.