I woke up in the mountains today. 

I could see them from the cottage window. It had been foggy for so long now, and it had been so long since I have been here. But the fog had cleared; it was a bright, sunny day. 

I woke up in the mountains today. 

I sat up and stretched. Took a huge breath and from within blurry eyes I saw what my nose had already given away. 

And I woke up in the mountains today. 

The sweet smell of tea and crepes wafted up to the attic where I slept. Shifting the layer of blankets off of me, I creaked down the stairs, hungry for conversation. 

I woke up in the mountains today and I finally got to meet her. 

Long gray hair tucked behind her ears, she was moving around a small kitchen with so much purpose and fervor, it took my breath away. She was stacking the crepes as she made them, and wrapping them in tinfoil. 

To keep them warm for when it’s time to eat, she said.

“Good morning!”

I grabbed a seat at the small table in the nook and waited for her to join me. She was humming and dancing all around the kitchen, creating magical smells with every smear of wet flour mix on the sizzling hot pan. A couple dribbles off the ladle and then she’d swirl it around with the rounded edge, creating a large circle that would crisp up in mere seconds. A flip, a hum, and it took its place in the stack covered in tin foil. 

There’s bananas and blueberries and mangoes. And Nutella and whipped cream for that extra sweetness. Start stacking.

She placed the tinfoil wrapped stack of crepes in front of me and we created our crepe-cakes. A weekend tradition, finally shared with one another. That sweet moment alone in the kitchen, creating and cooking, however poorly, however messily, but doing it out of care and love for yourself. 

“I have nothing to talk about this time.” I said. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

There’s always something to talk about. Didn’t you see the mountains today?

“Have they always been there? I’ve never noticed them before. ”

This place is always little under construction, but behind all that fog in the distance, I’m pretty sure the mountains have always been there. Who else would be watching over you?

I cut a bite out of my crepe cake. “This feels so far away and yet so close to me. I don’t know what else to do to get here. I don’t know what I need to do next.”

You need to have patience. Sometimes, instead of doing, you just need to wait.

“What am I waiting for?”

Maybe it’s a who.

“You’re kidding.”

You’re making new decisions and choices every single day. There’s no way for me to know.

“What did you do when you were where I am, then.”

She laughed and ran her fingers through her hair. She sighed, sipped her tea, and looked out towards the garden. Do you see that faint, brown spot in the distance? You know what used to be there, right?

I nodded and drank my tea sheepishly. My decision to trust a “who” had created quite the storm for the future. I hadn’t realized it in the moment, as I drove past the signs with a singular goal in mind. But a single decision had upset the scales of my life quite severely. 

It’s not there anymore. It just disappeared one day. And now there’s more space than ever before. Your capacity has increased, there’s room for other things now. For other people.

“I think I know what we have to talk about.”

I think we’ve already talked plenty about it, no? 

She smiled and placed a bite of her crepe cake on her tongue, humming as she ate. There was such a vibrant energy about her, I thought. So much love, so much joy. I felt a pang of jealousy in my stomach as I watched her eat breakfast. Sitting there in a green flowy dress; she beamed happiness. 

Maybe she saw the look on my face: We worked hard to get where we are. We have worked very hard. You still have to work so hard. It’s your privilege to choose who stays and your responsibility to decide who’s left behind. You choose who and what those are. You choose who and what you fight for. And if your heart beats true, and you know a truth so frighteningly real that it hurts to hold on to, you had better abandon all else and work hard for it. Even if it doesn’t work out, fight for what you know is true. Fight for the people you love. Make a stand with them, for them. Even if they won’t stand with you.

“I have to go now, don’t I?”

Take a look behind you, before you do.

I take a final sip of my tea and turn to look at the wall behind me. There’s art and words and photographs hanging everywhere sunlight hits. But right in the center, lit up the brightest, is a faded beige canvas art. On it, in stark bright black are the words, 

I am tired of this stagnant, passive existence. 

But I am doing something about it. 

I am actively transforming and slipping from the hands of tradition.

I am becoming me.

I close my eyes and wake up in my own bed. I vow to live till the day I wake up in the mountains. Till the day I am making sweet tea and crepes in a small kitchen. Till the day I am wearing a green flowy dress, beaming with more happiness and love than I can muster now.

I want to wake up in the mountains someday.

I’m going to wake up in the mountains, someday.