Writing a blog means never letting a stray thought go by without evaluating it as a possible topic...and writing and saving at least a subject line for a potential blogpost. And that is why I am here. When Andy Murray got his Wimbledon trophy, the picture prompted some news person to ask his readership to post pictures of the single best moment of their lives.
The request snagged my attention, and, as such things do, forced me to think about what picture I might post. I zipped through the posted pictures and was unsurprised to see wedding and baby and graduation photos, some with annotations of physical and emotional circumstances that raised the ante to 'best' rather than simply momentous occasions. None, however, prompted me to the 'Aha! That's it!' response I was looking for.
Can I pin down the single best moment of my life? There have been many that I remember vividly, so I suspect that they would be in the running, but...'best'??? Hard to categorize all the moments and arrange them from worst to best.
Wedding, yes. The birth of our girls, yes and yes. Our granddaughters, yes and yes, squared. The first smiles, the first recognitions, the first laughs..yes, oh lord, yes. Our first house, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and..well, you get the idea. The unforgettably happy and momentous teaching moments. Garden moments. The double rainbow moments when Nature overwhelms you: the golden light of a sunset in Venice, Lake Louise, the day it went from frozen green to brilliant blue overnight, glaciers calving on our Alaska cruise, the blue Caribbean..The wonder in our daughters' eyes when they experienced Disneyworld for the first time, being part of one of the famous marches on Washington in the Vietnam era, the awe of being in Westminster Abbey amidst the resting places of the great, or seeing the heavenly colors of Sainte Chappelle; Monet's Waterlilies at l'Orangerie, standing in the silent square before the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg near midnight, or on the field at Gettysburg or Antietam in summer heat, being where history was made in so many places, at so many times..these are all moments worth remembering.
But it is impossible to winnow them down to a handful, far less a single moment. So, if I can't have one, I will take them all. All the moments of my life are singular, are the best, are the most memorable, the most wonderful, whether they be the ones I spend at my laptop or scrubbing floors, or fixing dinner. I wish that I could live that way, celebrating all my moments as if they were the single best moment of my life. A circumstance devoutly to be wished. Carpe diem. Live the moment.
Take the picture, because today's the day, and this, right now, is the moment.
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