Unremarkable Moments

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You know those magical moments--those really magical moments--that are literally just a moment? A snapshot that stays with you forever, on multiple levels, and elicits an intense flood of emotion where you are sent back in time... you can feel the temperature of the air, the breeze on your skin, the rain on your face, the water lapping around you, the aroma of coffee--it's as though you've been snatched up and tossed back into the past.

I'm not talking about Big Moments like babies being born or plucking choux buns from your wedding cake--I'm talking of unremarkable moments. The ones that seem so enormous because they WERE so unremarkable, yet they hold such magic in them--perhaps because they were a skerrick of time when you were so purely happy. When you were doing nothing more than smiling.

Not thinking. Just being.

Here is one of mine, Paris, 9 January 2013 when Riley threw a balloon (he had found lolling along the street) into the Seine. We had been walking in the rain, crossing the Pont de Sully towards l'Ile Saint-Louis--on the hunt for ice cream, and he just lobbed it into the sky.

It was one of those moments where time stood still. And it was so overwhelmingly beautiful. I don't know why.

It was nothing and it was everything.

Do you know what I mean?

I have others--particularly a time in the ocean off Langkawi Island (Malaysia), floating on my back, staring above at the palm trees swaying overhead and feeling nothing but the present moment. Pure happiness. Nowhere to be. Nothing to think about other than telling myself 'remember this moment, remember this moment'. And I do.

What unremarkable moments do you remember? I would so love to know.