I'm thinking right now about perfect moments. You know what I mean. Those seconds, infinitely small frames in time that you wish you could freeze in a snapshot. Sometimes these moments, after enough time goes by, fade away. They take a backseat to all the other stuff in your mind; the math tests and friends' phone numbers and more recent memories. But some of them, the really special ones, remain forever.
My first perfect moment, I remember, was the day I turned four years old. I think. I could have been turning three... I'm not sure. In any case, I woke up early, so early it wasn't entirely light out yet, and went into the living room, where my parents were sitting, just talking, with the window behind them and snow, that fairy tale white stuff, falling in the background. I don't know what it was, whether the lull of their voices or the fact that I was turning four (or three) or the snow outside, or a combination of the three. But somehow, that moment was so perfect and I was so amazingly contented, that I've never forgot it.
The second perfect moment was later. I was seven, living in Texas, and driving in the car with my dad. In that blue car we used to have. (Or was it green? My memory fades; it was a long time ago.) I don't remember where we were going or what we were doing, but I do remember that song Fly by Sugar Ray playing over the radio. And I remember being very, very happy. Not the quiet, contented sort of happy I was in my first perfect moment, but the sort of bursting-at-the-seams happy. The OMG-this-is-crazy sort of happy.
Since then, there've been more perfect moments. Sitting with my cousin Lance Tankman (ha! not his real name) at the anniversary party none of my friends were at, my and Mich's inside joke at the Subway by the beach, climbing the rocks. And so many before that, too many to think of that happened before. I should really try to write them down sometime, keep a record of little moments like that. Moments that make the rest of life and all the crap I go through sometimes, worth getting through.