It was a recent Friday night and Janet and I were just simply talking. We realized that the kids were gone, with the exception of our littlest one at just shy of 4 years old and the house was incredibly quiet. We were thinking that we probably hadn’t experienced that for some time and Janet said something like, “It’s too quiet for this lifetime.” I said that it hasn’t been this quiet for a very long, long time.
That started the process as we reminisced from scene to scene. It was interesting because each of us remembered clearly certain scenes and many of those scenes in our history together were identical. Of all the various moments we could have chosen, we tended to choose the same moments to fix on. In some cases, we didn’t even know why.
When Janet mentioned one particular scene in Detroit some 17 years ago, I asked her why that one scene when there could have been any number of other scenes. I remembered it vividly also, and I also don’t remember why. I asked her whether it was nostalgic, provocative, iconic: what was it about that particular scene which made the difference? She didn’t know. She just remembered.
It occurred to me, at that moment, that life is really nothing other than the time we spend between the magical moments we live. Each of us lives, individually and with others, momentary passages of time that we experience…sometimes alone and often times together.
It’s those magical moments of time which form the glue that keeps our lives together. It’s a continuum from the very beginning until today as we both experience and remember those experiences as time rolls on.
Detroit was clearly a magical moment. Janet was sitting on a high table with her colleague looking through a wide long pane window overlooking a golf course. I was in a sweatshirt and running shorts, as I jogged across the golf course underneath both of them. They looked down, saw me, and exchanged thoughts. I looked up, saw them, and wondered what they were saying.
Seventeen years later, Janet and I share our lives together and do our very best to raise our three sweethearts. Seventeen years later, I note my life filled with magical moments and feel blessed that I’ve experienced and can remember what they are.
Original writing date: February 26, 2007