Collecting Snow Globes

I was thinking this morning of times in my life when I’ve been truly happy, the kind of in-the-moment happiness when you don’t think about anything else. When the experience isn’t tinged with the anxiety of what is coming next or when the happiness will end.

Several jumped out at me immediately – the obvious ones like the day I met my husband, our wedding, and when my nephews and nieces were born, and being on my own for the first time.

But there was always more to those stories than the pureness of the joyful experience. I guess it’s the writer in me, even before I knew I was a writer, stepping back to observe, to add context, to provide back story, to flesh out the characters.

Instead of just being one of the characters and being in the moment.

When I met my husband, we had an immediate connection, but alas, we were both involved with other people.

On my own for the first time, while a heady experience, was still a partially troubling one. All these decisions to make and what if I made the wrong ones?

And at the wedding, I’m smiling at the camera while worrying if everyone is having a good time. In those deceptively-serene looking shots of the bride preparing to take the stage, I’m fretting if all will go well, hoping that no one will step on my dress or get sick or start a feud. (Hey, I’d heard worse stories)

Even as my gaze melted into the beautiful baby faces of my nieces and nephews, part of me stepped away to speculate upon their futures. The sadness of knowing that their perfect innocence wouldn’t last forever.

There is one moment that in my memory is pure and crystalline, and it’s not a particularly earth-shattering or life-changing event, none of those stepping-stone experiences that you remember forever or commemorate with photographs or celebrations.

It was when Husband and I saw “Blue Man Group” in NYC the weekend before 9/11.

Admittedly, I was fretty and distracted before the show, my mind swirling with the usual thoughts I have when we go into the city – will we make the train, how are we going to find this place, what if we get lost in the Subway, where are we going to eat. As it got closer to showtime and I got hungrier, I got crankier. But we found a place. I don’t remember what.

But what I remember was the show.

The feeling of being so completely caught up in the experience that no other thought could intrude. We were sitting close enough to the stage to be considered in the “splash zone,” so we were advised to wear provided plastic ponchos lest we go home covered with paint, water, and whatever other goo they played with during the show. At one point, toward the end, they used strobe lights and sent rolls of toilet paper streaming over the audience and the Blue Men themselves stepped off the stage and climbed over the tops of the seats and it was just this pure, amazing, kinetic moment of sound and light and music that so overwhelmed me I could only surrender my senses to it. I broke free to glance over at Husband and he looked like kid seeing the circus for the first time, and the strobe light made him appear to glow.

We came out of the theater laughing.

And then we resumed the rest of our lives.

I’m told it’s a learned skill, the mindfulness of being in the moment. And as much as I practice it, I haven’t quite gotten it by the tail yet.

I keep working on it. I go for a walk and think about how the air feels against my face and the way the trees look and the crunch of the leaves under my feet and then I think about jumping into piles of leaves as a kid and other things about autumn and I’m into another story and I’ve lost my place.

In the shower I can’t just think about how the hot water hits the back of my neck and how the shampoo smells. The heat and water get my mind working and I’m thinking of something I want to write that day.

I get the idea, the mindfulness thing, but for a writer, it’s like herding cats.

The one place I’ve been the most successful is while washing dishes. I concentrate on the heat of the water through my gloves and the way the soap bubbles look trailing down a dish.

Guess you’ve got to start somewhere.

But I’ll get it. And someday I’ll have another pure little nugget of life captured in a snow globe, to put on the shelf with the others.