One Moment

A late spring thunderstorm prowls its way across the expanse of deep green hills and tawny grasslands surrounding my house in central Texas. Its bruise of clouds darkens my living room and grumbles like a far-away tympany, echoes rising up, then falling away, then rising up again. Over the tympany, great booms of thunder explode impatiently and without warning. Their wildness excites my sensibilities and lures me closer.

This moment is a wonderful moment.

In the cooling breeze, I sit on our front porch in a wooden rocking chair, its arms polished with use. It was a present from my husband to celebrate our first year of marriage nearly two decades ago. With no knowledge of his purchase, I, too, bought the same chair for him from the same nearby small-town hardware store. When we exchanged our gifts, we marveled at how perfectly we fit together. Intertwined like a vine, we soaked up each other’s love with unquenchable thirst.

The storm drifts closer, the entire sky now darkening in front of me. A hole yawns open in the clouds, and white sun rays pierce through from the heavens for a few precious moments, anointing the new spring leaves on the crown of one small oak tree. The leaves quiver in the wind, glowing green until the cloud hole closes again. Then, the wind stops suddenly, on cue from a mad conductor. The air falls silent and the birds stop singing, huddled close together on branches. A spicy-clean rain-smell saturates the heavy air, a scent as ambrosial as any holy incense swung from golden chains.

This moment is a sacred moment.

Closing my eyes and inhaling deeply, my memory lands at a remote campsite nestled in a bend of the Green River in western Wyoming. Wild adventures down dusty roads, navigating the unknown bound our youthful souls to one another back then. We spent our days in a postcard: fly fishing for trout in crystalline waters surrounded by sagebrush and dark pine forests in the Wind River Range. Every night, icy rain spit on us, soaking the translucent walls of our weary tent. I’m cold and miserable; he’s unaware and snoring. Soon we’ll start trying to have a child. We’ll get through this, I think.

The conductor slashes the baton through the air and the wind obeys, bending the crowns and branches back and forth where the birds cling. Unable to hold back any longer, the steel gray clouds let go. The rain hammers down, and, for a moment, the pounding is all I can hear. A celestial herd of ghostly bison charging, heads and horns low to the ground. Make way!

This moment is an awesome moment.

Watching my beloved lay down a perfect roll cast on the top of Dollar Lake, I imagined the joy of watching our young child close behind him, both sets of eyes locked on the #16 Parachute Adams they hope will fool a luckless Rainbow. Thick brown hair and stubborn like me. Strong-jawed and stoic like him. But we could not have known it would be eight more years before a child would come. And we could never have imagined how that would upend everything.

This moment is a painful moment.

I breathe in the rain-smell, now sweetened with juniper. Eyes closed again, I let the rain pound everything else out of my head, a welcome respite. A few more minutes pass before the storm has left me behind, snaking its way north over other hills and other houses.

The cardinals are first to break the silence. Their sweet-sweet-sweet refrains arouse everyone back to work. I rise, too, and walk to the end of the porch to visit the soft green moss pillows which grow on the end of a tar-hardened railroad tie. I am always surprised to find moss growing here in central Texas. In our sunny climate and rocky soils, mosses do not flourish as they do in the forests of the north and east with their abundance of moisture and shade.

But the mosses here are robust. They have learned to hold tight to the slightest of anchors. During times of drought, they adapt. When the rain returns, they drink up every drop. The mosses pay close attention; they accept what is. They do not spend time chastising or longing or trying to change what cannot be changed, becoming hardened and weary. Even in the most difficult of circumstances, they remain soft like velveteen. Soft like compassion. These mosses are wonderful teachers, I decide.

One moment flows into the next, which flows into the next.

Moments of beauty and pain and wonder and heartache.

Each moment is simply a moment.

Mindfulness entered my life several years ago when everything seemed to be falling apart. All my usual tools for dealing with difficulties proved inadequate as waves of suffering continued. I began seeing a therapist who was also a mindfulness teacher. As he patiently worked with my resistance and complaints, he continued to encourage me to find an anchor. Finally, one night, as I stood outside watching the moon rise through the trees, full and orange, I realized I was fully present with the silence and stillness. Here’s my anchor, I thought. Each night thereafter for almost a year, I sat with the moon, breathing, listening, feeling, and noticing everything which was arising and passing.

I continue to practice regularly in nature, whether at home on my porch or while out on a hike. Nature offers an abundance of lessons which invite reflection on the Buddha’s teachings. I also relish time spent learning from my mindfulness teacher as well as a women’s Insight Meditation practice group.

Amy lives outside of Austin in the Texas Hill Country. Her essays have appeared in Glassworks and Sisyphus. Amy is currently working on a collection of creative nonfiction essays about nature, mindfulness, and adoption.