This Moment

Adele was singing something about either giving up or chasing pavements on our Bluetooth speaker. The steady barking, yipping, and howling of distant dogs both stray and owned wafted over our fence and sang her backup vocals. The cool night air was still not cold enough to force us inside, so we lingered in our yard chairs out behind our house. The army of irises stood in proud formation around the edge of the garden. A sliver of a moon hung precariously against a sky just a shade shy of utter black. Our own dogs alternated between sprawling out in their places of choice and every so once in a while bolting to the gate to bark at another dog that must have communicated something especially offensive or gotten to close to the door for their comfort. Laura sat beside me, her eyes glued to a screen she held in her hands, her blue bathrobe pulled around her tight. The broad upper leaves of the walnut tree overhead trembled in an imperceptible breeze. The outside world rushed forward with the force and speed of a locomotive, but here, if but for a single fleeting moment, I felt what it was like to live in the present and merely experience the wonder of this thing we call reality. My heart beat. My ears interpreted Adele and edited out the din of dogs. The most exquisite being to ever spring forth from the mind of God breathed in and out next to me. And I got to have a seat right in the middle of it. And I’m almost positive God was looking down and smiling.