When Your Heart Takes a Picture

There are some moments that bury themselves deeply into our subconscious. Rarely are they the big, eventful, or seemingly significant moments, they are almost always moments that seem unimportant or mundane. I had one of those today...

Through the past 15-20 years, I’ve mastered a small exercise I perform when I find myself in one of these moments. I want to remember everything, forget nothing, and I know that one day I’ll be looking back at that moment, and I’ll grow nostalgic. The room, the temperature, the smell, the person or people—in short, I want a snapshot of that moment. When this happens, I stop, look around me, and allow my heart to take a picture, my eyes acting as the lens.

This afternoon I had to bug bomb the new house because it has sat empty since it was built a year ago. There were beetles, small spiders, and a multitude of crickets that I figured had been living there rent-free for too long. It was time for them to give up their squatter's rights and move on to that big garden in the sky. I placed one bomb at the top of the stairs, one at the end of the downstairs hall, and one on the living room floor. Then I left. Two hours later it was time to face the massacre I’d so cruelly carried out and air out the house. Nathan, our 12 year-old wanted to go with me to witness the resulting mayhem. You know how boys are.

We went around the house opening up the windows, then we went into the entry where Nathan was delighted to see some poor bugs that lay there, still dying. To put them out of their misery, he decided his job should be to “give them a ride on the porcelain express,” as he called it. He set to work with an impressive dedication while I washed and sanitized the kitchen counters and surfaces.

After about an hour of completing small jobs around the house, we sat back in the patio chairs that are temporarily in the living room, enjoying the air conditioner that I’d had to turn on earlier. Nathan put his Queen’s Greatest Hits CD into the portable player and we relaxed, enjoying cokes and conversation. It was a priceless moment and I let my heart take a picture that I know one day will bring a smile to my wrinkled old face after Nathan is an adult and will no longer be fascinated with bug-bombing a house. I hope that some day, when he has to do his own house, he’ll remember this afternoon and give me a call and say, “Dude, do you remember that day we bug-bombed the house and listened to Queen, and you sang me those word words you’d written to the Bicycle Song? That was so cool.” (We have always called each other 'dude', something I hope never changes.)

Through all the work and stress of this move, this afternoon was like an oasis. A moment of  “cool” on a hot July day. It was better than any nap, regardless of how tired I am.