Moments to cherish

Sometimes a best day emerges if you just pay a little more attention, writes Jenny Beck.

The Beck boys and Mum, Jenny Beck. Photo supplied.
The Beck boys and Mum, Jenny Beck. Photo supplied.
December 27, 2010, and I'm holding my breath.

Fat drops of rain are plopping against the conservatory window. All the resident sons are around, all five of them. Reading and playing on the computer, a CD received as a Christmas present by one of the young adults an odd sideshow, irritating in its screamy quality only to me.

We're on holiday and the house is full, not just of bodies. Boys engaging in the odd hot spat, their voices raised in the passage as they toss a tennis ball front to back, back to front. (Shouldn't I be forbidding this? What's wrong with me?)

There's an unending food-foraging procession to the kitchen, the smell of noodles hanging in the air, and the living room littered with glasses and crumby plates.

And I'm holding my breath for the perfection of it.

Three years ago I had a clear sense of Pay Attention To Each Moment. It came when I wasn't comporting myself well. We'd planned a holiday to South Africa en famille, Mum and seven sons. Plus two girls, a party of 10. The trip started inauspiciously. We met the boys' father Andrew and his twins in central Wellington for dinner before an uneasy sleep on airport benches (a different and rather taxing story, enough said!) and our flight at 6am the next day.

But the group wasn't unified; I had a feeling of jelly slipping through my fingers as first one became disaffected and then another rolled his eyes as I issued an instruction. There was a strong air of fractiousness about the crew, and I was unsettled within, exhausted after conducting a two-day hearing and literally leaving the courtroom for the plane.

And then the apprehension came upon me, somewhere over Australia. This is real life; this is the main event. These are minor irritations; don't miss the unrepeatable. Watch and enjoy.

So I'm watching and enjoying today in the ordinariness of a post-Christmas afternoon.

I'm packing down in memory three dark heads now bowed over a map on the table, the youngest laughing at The Simpsons on the computer, the blond cuddled up in a duvet in the living room sipping a brew of coffee that I can't stop myself from saying is rather too strong for a teenager.

I must admit I weakened on Christmas Eve.

I breached all self-imposed peace rules and bought Isaac and Zak each a Nerf gun.

They look like plastic water pistols, but they fire small foam bullets. I thought they'd be fun, falling into the ''water pistol'' category rather than being scary-guns-therefore-verboten.

But oh, they caused nix but trauma and fighting. So into the cupboard they went for an indeterminate period with threats of, ''I'm thinking about putting them straight into the rubbish bin! Because that's where they belong!''

Hapless boys stared. At bedtime on Christmas Day, Zak prayed, hands pressed together: ''Thank you for my Nerf gun.''

Adding, possibly with a glance sneaked at me: ''Even though it didn't last long.''

It was difficult not to snicker.

I may open the cupboard now and take out the Nerf guns. I may say, ''New day, new chance,'' redemption always at hand. I may have to re-confiscate them later. I may have to pinch myself for good fortune, undeserved.

Freeze. Freeze the moment, this day made extraordinary by the quality of attention given it. So that I remember long after the date has been swallowed up by time.

Jenny Beck is a Dunedin lawyer.

- Tell us about your best day. Write to odt.features@odt.co.nz. We ask correspondents not to nominate weddings or births; of course they were the best days.

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