mountaintop moments

At Shawn's support group today, we each wrote about a 'mountaintop moment' - a moment of great joy in our lives.  And I was very pleased to realize that I had SO MANY to choose from.   

Some of the ones I considered but didn't pick: 

• the moment I learned that I was pregnant - at 3 am when I woke to go to the bathroom and thought this must be the first pee of the morning so I should take the pregnancy test now
• the moment of Shawn's birth.  Certainly not the moments leading up to it, but that second that he was born and I learned that love at first sight was indeed possible and very powerful 
• the years when Shawn was young, hanging out on the sidewalk with the neighbors and watching him play with the other kids, especially this time of year when the weather started getting nice and everyone came out to play. 
• walking him to school in the mornings, and having him come home from grade school for lunch on days when I worked at home
• moments from my own childhood: playing in my own neighborhood until after dark; playing flashlight tag with my cousins at my grandparent's house in WV; hanging out at the beach with my other cousins at my grandparent's house in NJ
• Falling asleep on the beach in NJ with the waves in the background, the sun shining down on me, the incredibly soft white sand beneath me.  
• the first time I went water skiing - that incredible feeling when it WORKED and I was up on the skis
• jumping out of an airplane when the parachute also WORKED and I realized I really did that
• So many moments of downhill skiing - the first real run when I finally figured out how everything in the lessons came together and it was a little like magic how I flew effortlessly down the mountain when just a moment before I was working so hard and nothing was right.
• that time skiing at Sunshine in Canada, the day when the clouds were low and we were quite literally skiing through them- I remember feeling like we were skiing in heaven.  
• The views from the alps - even the run right BEFORE the one in which I fell and broke my leg at Chamonix.  Not that last run though; that's one of those moments I wish I could roll back and do just a little differently!
• So many great moments in so many great countries - watching the sun rise over Jerusalem from Kibbutz Tzuba; lying on the bricks in Sienna with the sun shining down on us; sitting and drinking wine in Venice waiting out a pouring rain; wandering around in a garden in Japan; climbing the steep hill in Edinburg while still on crutches, eating tapas in Barcelona, riding bikes in Amsterdam, dinners at the town square in Prague... I could go on and on and on... 
• And the moments I chose to write about - listening to Shawn play music - any of the thousands of times from when he was very small to last night when I heard an early recording of the latest song he is working on.  In fact, my best memories of our life in England was right after I broke my leg, all the times I'd sit on the couch in our flat and listen to him play.  That stands out above all the rest of the trip as my favorite memories of our life in the UK.  Other musical moments: Listening to him perform his first impromptu public concert on the piano at a museum when he was six,  all the hours in the recording studio, his performances in Nashville...he and Zak playing in our hotel in Israel, playing in our hotel in Nashville, playing at writer's night... playing in our living room while I sit on the purple chair and Zeke sits at his feet.  

And those are just the ones that come to mind right now - if I think about it tomorrow I'm sure I'd start thinking of a whole different set of moments.  Life is indeed filled with wonder and joy.  When things get scary and bleak, I'll try hard to hold on to a few of these moments.