To a Perfect Day

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I remember sitting, many years ago now, outside on the deck of the Columbia Yacht Club in Chicago. A friend had invited my wife, my daughter, Andrea, and I for lunch.  It was a perfect day.  A mild breeze was blowing off Lake Michigan that glittered gold and impossibly blue below us.  Sailboats sporting flags of many colors played tag across the water.

“Wow,” Andrea opined. “If every day was like today everyone would want to live in Chicago!”  No one mentioned Michigan Avenue in February.

Today was such a perfect day here in Raleigh.  The sky was paintbox blue, if there were clouds they had drifted over to Chapel Hill, or maybe Durham. Here, everything was in bloom, but nary a breeze stirred the pollen that biology declares must accompany such flowerings. Greenery of varying heights and hues competed to carpet the glades shaded by the petaled trees. Variations on “What a glorious day!” echoed out of windows and down the dappled paths.

I can also recall perfect days in Albuquerque, NM, when a thunderstorm, backlit with lightening, swept down the Sandias. Perfect days in Freeman, SD, perched upon the ridge of my cousin’s barn, trying to call the fickle storm clouds, far out on the horizon, closer to our fields which could surely use a drink. Springfield, Ohio when nighttime summer showers blew breezes through the porch screens carrying strange aromas from beyond our city streets. Kalamazoo, MI, where heaping banks of lilacs perfumed huge swaths of the town. Everywhere, if we play careful heed, nature bestows her gifts of perfect days.

And it is those perfect days in varied perfect places that become the canvases upon which memory paints the scenes of our perfect moments. On days such as these memory moves her slight-of-hand with such grace that we may be deceived, for just the shadow of an instant, into believing that we have been transported back to one such moment. We stand transfixed, every sense alert, waiting for the missing players to take their places, so the fairy tale can unfold again - again perfect. Then a bird sings, a car drives by, or the voices of strangers intrude, and the scene dissolves; remembered perfection replaced with the merely exquisite present. With a shake, we move on about life, our memories trailing along, into the glory of yet another exceptional day.

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