blue

There are some moments that might seem as though they never happened in the first place. A minute, an hour, a day – a span of time – where you wish you could have stepped out of yourself to view it from the outside. It was just that beautiful. Ahhh, the moment I met Baby Scout, holding my Granny's hand as she met God, Saratoga over Labor Day weekend 2004, we were hiking in a snow storm and put on our swimsuits and waded in the most beautiful lake I have ever seen. We were freezing but it was one of the happiest moments of my life. Running the Carlsbad half-marathon with D in 2002. We couldn't believe we finished, after the night before. We had slept on the sand and fallen asleep with a box of wine and a "ghetto-blaster" blaring Billy Joel's Piano Man album. We woke up with stiff necks and headaches but what a beautiful morning on the coast~ One more would be Buffalo Wyoming. I will always remember that town, that summer, that person I was with, and sitting in those rocking chairs on Main street thinking "it can't get much better than this." If you pay close enough attention, sometimes you actually realize, just know, in the middle of one of those beautiful moments that you're part of a solitary occurrence, mitigated by time, place and coincidence. By fate. A first breath, a first kiss, last kiss, goodbye, a first time you realize the world actually can be beautiful and perfect, if only for that one moment. And you also know it's not going to happen just that way ever again. So your heart takes a snapshot, if you give pause to let it. And then you will always rememberexactly the way the sunlight fell, or a specific shade of blue in the ocean, or the hum of the cars or the smell of fresh rain falling on a summer afternoon in Wyoming. Or the details of someone else's skin. The picture, the details are yours to keep, for when alone in darkness and blues are blacks, and the cars drive you crazy with their constant buzzing, and it seems you've lost your sense of smell. And you miss the details of someone else's skin.What is most intriguing about these snapshots is how easily they can provide a measure of comfort as well as one of regret -- of lost opportunities, broken connections and irretrievable time. I lost a love and had to remember to breathe thinking my life was over and I would never be able to love like that again. Then I unexpectedly fell in love again and recognized it the very moment that we first kissed and exhaled a sigh – one that was somehow left with my heart attached to it. I did it again and I was ok. Love. And I remember stopping to take a picture, knowing all too well that it was not to happen exactly that way ever again. It was overwhelming and tender and mournful. If I had to explain, even to myself, how I felt at those moments, it could take a thousand words or it could take very few. A name. A date. A song. The color blue. The word inevitable. Life may not be replete with the moments that pause your soul, the vivid memories of which cause your heart beat differently, or make it hard to swallow. And all the better. Much of the beauty of those moments lies in their rarity -- in the awe of being in the right place, at the right time, a partaker in coincidence. And in finding a reason to believe in fate.