No, not the NPR program hosted by Terry Gross.

I mean ACTUAL FRESH AIR.

As in, I’m sitting in the living room right now and feeling a breeze from the kitchen window while listening to the song of the wind chimes on the porch and the peepers at the pond. Our living room is in the middle of the house (and the only room without windows in fact, although there are two doors that lead to the balcony that we keep cracked open for fresh air)—-and I’m still able to feel that glorious breeze.

You don’t know how much you cherish it until you don’t have it.

My poor mom. She is trapped. Trapped in the rehab nursing facility with the uncomfortable stale, sick dead, old air. Her roommate has been in the home for months and basically my mom is just visiting, so when her roommate complains that the fan is on, the fan is off. Or if her roommate didn’t want the window open (even a crack) the window wasn’t open even a crack.

Just walking into that facility in the first place makes me want to open a million windows and add a trillion air purifying plants—I hate that I feel this way when visiting her room too. So stale, hot and stifling. It’s hard for me to spend lots of time there without wanting to take off all my clothes and open all the windows and scream I NEED FRESH AIR!!!

The TV room around the corner is a wee respite, mom can sit by the open window and get some fresh air while she is in there. But in her room, nope. And she was able to wheel herself with visitors on to the front steps and the back deck area once the weather started to warm up last week—-JUST IN TIME for her to get the flu and be quarantined to her room this week. No fresh air for mom.

Until today. With mom having the room to herself since last night, HWMMS and I opened all the windows including letting light in one window that I don’t believe had the curtains drawn since she’s been there. Fresh. Air. And then we took the fan on her bedstand, the one that is unplugged and never used…and put it by the window on the nightstand across the room to blow, gently blow, fresh air into the space.

Dear God. It’s Life Affirming. Fresh Air.

Sometimes it really is the little things. I know I take them for granted.

I have a feeling once mom is home she’s not going to have a window closed in the house. At least until winter.