Salient Moments

Of course there are salient moments in my life.  We all have them.  Those moments that  are burned into our brains either because they were wonderful or horrible or funny or uniquely ordinary, those moments that stay with us always, those moments that other people remember differently but we know that what we remember is accurate; those are the moments that give us pause, or perspective, or peace.  In those moments, we come to accept and understand who we are, what confuses us, what seems right to us and how we connect to the world. 

We have thousands of those moments, but like old photographs, with time they fade.  We can bring them back by writing a journal entry, or sharing an experience that other people chronicle, or by a fragrance, a jewel, or a particular word.  Sometimes it doesn’t take much.  Sometimes listening to someone else’s moments will trigger a remembrance of our own moments and we swim through the immediate back to the what-was and animate the memory in the glory of glossy fuzziness.  Other times a location, an interaction, a reference may bring to mind a long inactive, igneous formation of a moment long since cooled and now rewarmed, thawed and dripping into now.

They are worth remembering.  And keeping.  And passing on.  I have a friend who appreciates that and has spent the past several years writing and remembering and poetizing those moments.  He has become masterful at both keeping salient moments and sharing them.  The sharing of them has cost him a lot in money, time and emotion.  He has been dedicated to distilling the distinguished ordinary into an elixir of insight that carries his grandchildren back to his grandparents and introduces them to each other.  He is the teamster of the magic carpet that transmits us all to those indestructible moments that are the DNA of family currency.

Of course, it’s humbling to be trusted with these life-building moments.  They are fragile, yet forever; tinsel, yet steel; twigs yet bricks in the architecture of his life.  He counts himself lucky, and maybe he is.  Or, maybe he was a little more careful than he realized when he decided to go out on a limb and build a family tree that would last for generations.  I’m an appendage to his tree – merely a friend.  But, a dear enough friend that he allowed me passage into his most salient moments.  And thus, they have become mine, and I am better.  Thanks, Quentin.