Little Moments As These

The light was fading as I nursed my little one and rocked. I had been reading a Robert B. Parker book. His writing seems sparse to me; to the point, not flowery and descriptive. My kind of book. As I closed the book and brought my drowsy baby to my shoulder, it seemed that the evening light was lingering. Spring was on its way.

I don’t know why that moment sticks in my memory. It seemed like I was under a spell; the glow of the evening, the good book, the nursing baby. I had a sense of being on the cusp of something wonderful but not quite yet to be.

These moment of wonder stay with me. Simple moments; almost like a pause in time. They have no particular meaning; nothing momentous happens; time simply moves on.

Another moment: Walking home in the late afternoon one day, I was struck by the dark clouds overhead. The sun shone from the west, its rays lighting up fall leaves at the tops of the trees. The smell of rain was in the air, and yet the sunshine made the colors of the trees brilliant. The clouds loomed dark and ominously overhead behind all that brightness. The air was still. It was raining somewhere.

The moment ended, and I took my daughters inside for a snack and homework time.

Yet another: Last June, I sat at a hotel desk late at night. The rest of the family was sleeping. I was gazing out of the window at Resurrection Bay in Seward, Alaska. The fog was rolling in, the tips of the mountains peeking out above. It was a moment I couldn’t get enough of. How could I possibly go to bed and close my eyes to the beauty that was right outside my window? It became darker and harder to see, and finally around midnight, I closed my laptop and crawled into bed.

These little glowing segments of time linger in my mind. Perhaps it’s my romantic soul that holds onto these moments, locking them away for a time when I will need them. The memories will come back to me, bidden by eyes that can no longer see clearly or limbs that can no longer move easily. Even so, I’ll be smiling.