Editor’s Note

This past weekend, I celebrated my friend’s 21st birthday. It’s among the first of what feels like an endless parade of twenty-firsts, milestones that have been hyped up for decades and then arrive, almost absurdly, like any other Saturday night. I walked to CVS at 11:30 p.m. for boxed cake mix, clutching it like something sacred. The cake came out mushy, uneven and a little tragic. I packed it together with both hands, literally molding it into shape, and it still tasted good. Sweet and soft and barely held together, like the night itself.

When I lit the candle and everyone gathered to sing, the moment stretched. For a few seconds, it felt like we were suspended between ages: too old to giggle over frosting, too young to toast with actual glasses. I thought about how birthdays mark time like scratches on a door frame, small proof that we’re moving forward even when we don’t feel it.

Later, I went to the basement to do laundry and happened upon a game of pong. I hadn’t played in a few terms, but something about the scene — the clatter of cups, the echoing laughter — felt familiar in a way that made me ache a little. I stayed at the edge, half in, half out, just watching. There’s comfort in that kind of distance, in the ability to observe joy without needing to insert yourself into it.

One of my housemates has a cat, a small orange thing with the personality of a jack-in-the-box, who springing out of her room every so often to dart between shadows and doorframes. He’s timid most of the time, but when the noise dies down and the crowd thins, he comes alive. Lately, during our “Hunting Wives” watch parties, he’s taken to prowling around the living room like he owns the place. He stalks across the backs of couches, curls his tail around someone’s head, pauses dramatically by the TV. I like to think he understands the art of lingering on the periphery, of watching quietly until the right moment to join in.

Monday was Diwali, and my version of celebration was less luminous than usual. I had forgotten about the holiday; I spent most of the day hunched over my biochem notes, ink stains where sparklers should’ve been. That night, my family FaceTimed me from home. I smiled as my sister proudly showed off her handmade paper lanterns. We’re not particularly devout, but we celebrate with a kind of creative sincerity. Distance doesn’t stop us; it just changes the medium. I watched the glow of candles flicker across their faces, their laughter half-a-second delayed through the screen, and felt that familiar ache of being close and far at the same time.

The soft cake, the pong game, the prowling cat, the pixelated candlelight — the small moments feel connected somehow. They’re all little acts of noticing, of loving quietly. Maybe this is my way of being in the world: half participant, half observer, suspended between presence and reflection.

There’s a kind of love in watching things closely, in paying attention to how a friend’s eyes flicker when they blow out a candle, in the rhythm of laughter bouncing off basement walls, in the tender ridiculousness of a cat watching TV. Observation doesn’t mean distance. Sometimes it’s the purest form of participation, the way we hold the world without interrupting it.

This week in Mirror, we observe. One writer sits down with female DJs on campus. Another looks into the Friday afternoon protests on Main Street. A third writer investigates the Free Market. Our relationship columnists return with a new love affair gone awry.

The cat prowls. The cake has been eaten. The pong table is sticky again. My notes from Monday are still scattered across my desk. My home smells like candle smoke. And I’m still watching from somewhere in between, where everything ordinary glows just a little.

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