The Best Days

There have been a few days in my life which I would call pretty much perfect. When I look back on them, all I think about was how good of a day it was. A perfect kind of experience that's written in the memory just like that--with every detail painted there in pretty colors and sounds.
There are a lot of them from when I was a kid. Once my brothers and I spent the whole day mucking out the old chicken coop and turning it into our own personal fort. We worked so hard. We found a can of orange spray paint and made our own signs. And we cleaned and prepared. When we finally went up to have supper, we were so hungry. I think it was the best meal my mom ever made. It was a great day, because we'd spent it together, doing something without arguing.
Another day I remember was in the summer, the dog days. During the drought of 87. Mom let us play outside in our cattle tank turned swimming pool all day. We had popcicles and ran around like wild chickens doing things kids do, screaming and playing make believe and making up dumb games to play in the water. When I changed my clothes that afternoon, I imagined that this must have been what camp was like. That night Mom decided it was too hot to sleep in our un-airconditioned bedrooms, so we slept with blankets and pillows in the sectioned off living room with the window unit keeping us cool. The smell of freon and the quiet rumbling of the fan with the crickets and cicadas outside lulled me to sleep, and I still think of that day on the long summer nights I have.
Yesterday I drove by the sign to Indian Creek Park and I remembered this amazing day. I don't know what made it so great. We had a family picnic on Memorial Day, my family and Daniel's family. The end of my junior year of high school, just hanging out at a secluded park with some of my favorite people.
That day Daniel's dad told me that they'd decided that Daniel would leave for college in the fall instead of graduating like normal people. It was because he'd decided he wanted to marry me so he wanted to get a jump start on things.
We hiked through the woods. Daniel's oldest brother was engaged then, and his fiancee was with us, along with the next oldest and the next youngest. We ate food from the fire and spent the day laughing and hanging out. It was a most ordinary day, and yet it was a most perfect day.
Another perfect day was a canoe trip I took with my brother and his friends when I was fifteen. We started the day laughing. We ate together at the K-Mart diner, and then we drove up to the river and canoed all day. When we finished we did a little caving and then we drove home, cleaned up, and went to see a movie together. Everything fell into place. The company was great. The weather was great. It was just a great day. A perfect kind of day.
When I look back, the monumental days, in which big things happened, those huge memories like having a baby or graduating... those days are different than these perfectly perfect days. They're special and they're memorable, but the best of days seem to end up being strangely normal.
On Tuesday we had another snow storm. We got about 8 inches of snow overnight. My husband was out of town for work, so I spent it home with the kids, playing games and reading books. They played outside, and I did some shoveling. We watched a movie together and had supper and when I put them to bed, I realized that it had been another one of those Best Days. The kind that pass in such a normal way, but when you look back, you see how everything just fell into place. And it was beautiful.
I wish I could freeze time sometimes, make these girls stay little and wonderful and innocent forever. But I can't. So, since I can't, I just have to keep these memories, store up the best days. And hopefully they'll have a few that they look back on and think about how amazing they were, just being kids, enjoying the simplicity of everyday perfect.