Yesterday--Sunday--it rained on us, Hubby and me. A cold, raw rainfall. The sort that makes your bones ache and hope sink away. Not that it mattered. Our hopes had sunk out of sight long before the drops began to fall.
We'd spent the day trying to find a new house. Time is ticking, and we need to buy something (anything!) soon. We'd started with an open house, and then driven around for what felt like an eternity (and I still contend truly was). Nothing panned out. Worse, everything was dishearteningly wrong. Except the rain. At least that came through for us.
I convinced Hubby to finally forget it and give up. The search. The rain. Our sunk hopes. Instead we stumbled into a local bakery, and oh, it was bright and warm and smelled so wonderful. We hunched over two pumpkin cream cheese whoopie pies that evaporated in no more than two seconds-how that happened, I just can't explain. Then we held hands and sighed. Happily. We'll find a house. Hopefully. But it's not every day that bakery makes pumpkin whoopie pies. Oh, no. They are even rarer than the perfect house.
Last week there was a contest. Smith Magazine was collecting stories about one moment that changed their readers' lives for a new book. The Moment. GalleyCat--a website for publishing industry news--asked people to share their own particular moment at this Facebook link. Serious, silly, short, or a doorstopper, they wanted to hear others' tales. A free book was even on the line for the winner. (Check it out.)
I'd been thinking a lot about what I would write, if. Perhaps my moment would be when I found out about BBB's diagnosis. How that changed my entire world, but not before tipping it on its end and then punting it up to the moon and then beyond far past the stars into nothingness, only to let it splat to the ground. Perhaps.
I believe the more likely choice would be the moment, so many months later, when I stood in his hospital room and stared down at the city streets below, at the honking, the yelling, the scurrying crowds, and I laughed. Angiomas aren't a gift. They are nothing to rejoice in and nothing to giggle over. But there is a gift in discovering how simply unimportant yelling and honking and scurrying really is. No, I'll never forget that moment.
Which is why we ended up in a bakery. Which is why I figure eventually we'll find a house. Because it's not important. Probably I could have entered that moment. But then I wouldn't have been sitting in a bakery with my husband, holding hands and eating whoopie pies. And really, who needs that.
So, what was your moment? And when's the last time you snuck off and did something truly important?
