A Quiet Moment

Copyright © 2017

by Ralph F. Couey

The breeze blows softly, taking just enough of the edge off the warmth of the bright sunlight.  Leaves rustle in the trees above my head and the music of the songbirds fills the air.  The cool, green grass wraps around my bare feet in a most welcoming way, all while I attempt to remember that it is mid-

December.

There is a kind of delicious irony to be savored on such a calm, peaceful evening, remembering other Decembers in other, less congenial locales.  I can remember the biting wind, chilling me to the bone.  I remember shoveling huge amounts of snow, trying to drive through ice storms and blizzards.  But those memories seem so far away.

I know there are millions of you who are dealing with all the unpleasantries of winter, and believe me, I do feel your pain.  But at the risk of seeming smug, that's just not me this year.

I've learned that when I find myself in pleasant and advantageous circumstances, I need to take the time to savor those things; to treasure the moment, storing those feelings and sensations away in the vault of memory.

Life is a collection of moments, some bad, some forgettable, and some golden.   It is the ones that fall at either end of that scale that tend to stay with us.  Sadly, it is the bad ones which remain the most vivid of recollections.  I'm not sure why that is, perhaps that pain makes the deepest of impressions.  Doing a quick inventory of my own set of memories, there seems to be an even mix between the two.  The ones in the middle pop up from time to time, unexpected and unbidden.  Out of the clear blue, I may experience a few moments lying on the couch in Pennsylvania, watching television while the big flakes of a lake effect snow storm float and dance outside the window.  Or a piece of a late night commute home through Northern Virginia astride my motorcycle.  

The bad ones sweep in, bringing with them all the anger, sorrow, and angst that was present at that moment.  There was the death of my first dog, my first personal acquaintance with the finality associated with the end of life.  The last time I sat with my father and had to face the harsh realization that he was leaving and he wouldn't be back.  Aboard my ship off the coast of Australia, holding the Red Cross message in my hands, telling me that my mother was dying.  Knowing that being 11,000 miles from home, there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. 

There are others I won't talk about, times of horrifyingly brain-dead behavior that still give me sleepless nights.

But as every night has a day, every bad memory is balanced, even overwhelmed by the golden moments.  Watching breathless as our four children found their way into the world, and all those wonderful years of cuteness and love that followed.  The first time my eyes found the girl who would be my wife, across 30 lanes of a crowded bowling alley.  And all those moments when I had given up on myself and she refused to give up on me.  The magic of grandchildren, and the many joys they've given.  Then there were those moments on the Appalachian Trail, alone with the forest and God.

These are the thoughts that drift through my mind on a beautiful evening in mid-December feeling the warmth of the sun on my shoulders.  It is a quiet moment; a peaceful moment, so rare in a world that knows only one pace:  breakneck speed.  We need moments like this, if for no other reason than to remember other moments.  

Take the time to stop, turn around, and look back up the trail your life has followed.  It is that past that has shaped the present, and will give meaning to the future.