The Counter, Cleared.

The counter is not finished being cleared. It never really is. Seasons don't end with a hard close — not the ones that matter. You carry the good things forward. The lessons that cost something. The moments that changed you. What you let go of isn't the whole season — just the weight of it.

So here I am. In between. The way I always am when something new is starting.

Last week I cut the first watermelon. Had a few strawberries — the small ones, the real ones. Apricots, soft enough to bruise if you looked at them wrong. A bunch of roses on the counter I picked from the garden because they were beautiful. I stood in my kitchen and ate like I had nowhere to be.

That's how I know summer has arrived. Not the calendar. The strawberries. The roses, opening anyway.

This summer I am moving toward lighter. Not empty — lighter. There's a difference. You don't clear the counter to have nothing on it. You clear it to feel the space. To let the air move through. To remember what a fresh start feels like.

Open the windows. Let the light in. Not as a metaphor — as an actual thing you do on an actual morning.

I could give you a list here. Five ways to slow down this summer. But that's not quite it.

It's more like a breath out — a long one, so long that everything you've been carrying just goes with it. The way the tide pulls back and takes the sand.

And what's left isn't empty. It's room. Room for summer to arrive the way it actually does — quietly, without announcing itself. The watermelon on a Tuesday. The windows left open by accident. The moment you realize you've been sitting in the light for twenty minutes and didn't check your phone.

Find your quiet spot. The first one that comes to mind — don't overthink it. Let the water take the sand out. Exhale.

In that moment, you'll feel what's actually yours. What fits. What matters. Free, and cleared, and ready for whatever's arriving next.

I think this is why Nonna lives in so many of us. Her life was never easy. Never without trouble. But she opened the windows anyway. She set the table anyway. She fed people from almost nothing because the feeding was never about the food.

It was about the light she let in.