And yet it happens, year on year, a relentless change to adapt to. Sunny gregariousness is replaced with dour cold snaps and even indoors people layer on clothes not quite fit for the season.
She has dressed her toddler in such a way, with multiple layers of light t-shirts and trousers underneath a vibrant yellow raincoat. He waddles through their apartment, the clothes bundling on him like swollen muscles, and both parents chuckle to themselves as he navigates his movements with this new, inconvenient weight; a clumsy ray of sunshine.
A ruby sunset peeks through a grey horizon and he is taking their child out before dark for a brief walk, easing them into a sleepy night. She has worked hard all day in this uncharacteristically cold São Paulo apartment – so cold that she’s been wearing cotton gloves - but as her child and husband leave her for fourty minutes of solitude, she begins a leisurely ritual. She pulls the gloves off, her bare skin greeting the evening air, and she switches on a hob and begins to heat a saucepan. She takes her favourite mug out from a cupboard - an ornate ceramic she bought in a London flea market - and whips together a well-earned cocktail in the saucepan - a São Paulo Winter - and pairs it with Pão de Mel, a Brazillian Honey Cake.
Like all great rituals, she is conscientious about this particular slice of rest. She had waited until her workday was done, until she was alone, and she had prepared both the cocktail’s cinnamon syrup and honey cakes earlier in the week. With her favourite mug and a sweet honeyed puck of chocolate, she sits by the window and basks in the day’s last light. The heat of the mug is expansive and radiates out between her palms. The honey cake is rich and bewitching. She hears the laughter of her loved ones outside. They're not far now. But for one more minute, her delicious solitude remains hers.
