July 29, 2007:

I don't often write. Even as a girl, keeping a diary felt like playing at being a girl. And writing means permanence somehow...I will have to look back at these words. I was never comfortable with that. Never satisfied with what was looking back. But today, only words will do, strangely...today these words are worth a thousand pictures to me.

Today I felt the truest...happiness? contentment? I have felt since I was ten years old. I felt it in a moment, a second really. Back to the sun, belly to the rock, face to the lake...it was so full and complete that it astounded me, shook me. And in the next moment my general reality tried to break in as fast as it could..."Really? You think you deserve what that felt like, just there? Is that really what you felt? And those reasons for your unhappiness that plagued you during the week...you, what? Let them go? How very selfish of you..."

And so here I am. Writing to remember moments that cultivated in that whole, true joy I felt, so much more whole than I thought I could feel again.

Those moments:

- the turning pages of my book, the loudest sound of the evening, the only sound in the building

- the feel of dragonfly wings on my bare back, sitting for only a moment but sitting all the same...for me...

- headphones in one ear, the other to the shore...those beautiful, breaking waves

- the stark silhouettes of pines against sunset

- my car parked so long that beautiful tangles of spiderwebs grow all over it...stay stay stay don't move

- that sharp bite of lake water as we dive in full-force...cover your head cover your head

- watching you, a spider, rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall...pitying you...only to realize that all that rising and falling produced the most intricate net...you knew all along

- paging through Sam Abell photographs in a half-lit room...those incredible compositions still jumped off of every page

- the joy of a dog, head out the car window, face to the wind, nose to the clouds

- blood red strawberries in a tall glass of clear sangria

- my father napping shirtless in the sun, so peaceful...no one deserves it more

- the frowning faces of family sad to leave...because it means they love to be here

- the beautiful violence of my teeth breaking through peach flesh...surveying the carnage, the thousands of oranges and reds and yellows

- my mum's face in the setting rays of the sun...she glows, she glows...will she ever know

- the tender burnt skin of the backs of my knees...it hurts to move but it feels so beautiful...reminding me to say, don't move, just stay

I want every sentence, every letter, to jump off this page. But they never do...these pieces of a life, these moments. It may not seem like I notice them to you, but I do, I do...

You are right Tamara. They will disappear. There will be a day when it will all be gone. But don't turn away. Remember these moments and never let them drift away. Keep them in you. Always remember that one moment in that sun when all you had to be was a sister, a daughter, a child of God.

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Words and Photo © Tamara Paetkau