pause

I have been seeking blogworthy moments in the past few days. Oh, there are plenty. But I'm very particular.

I found last Sunday after dinner. After church and fellowship time in the afternoon, I had gone with mom, dad, Amy and Andy to visit a family friend who was in the hospital. By the time we finished it was 5:00 p.m., so we decided to stop by a mall for dinner. At first mum and daddy and I thought about more exotic cuisine (Bangkok has so many options!), but it is always the most fun when everyone present can enjoy themselves. So we decided to go to a cute little restaurant that Amy and Andy could enjoy too.

After dinner and TCBY's - nowhere near as popular here as it is in the States, but a nice reminder for me of when I was a kid and we lived in Denver, Colorado and TCBY's was such a treat - we all took the elevator to the 6th floor of the parking complex. Actually last night was memory night for me, because the mall we went to, Silom Complex, was one where mom and the rest of us used to wait to meet dad after work. I had forgotten, but I remembered in the elevator on the way out. As I made that realization, the elevator door opened to reveal the very floor where we'd often waited - the floor with a food court and a funny sort of wall that I remember well from about 10 years ago, when I was 12. Ah, memories. :P

But the blogworthy moment happened as we walked to our car in the parking complex. It was the sort of dark that happens when day is handing the reigns to night. There were not a lot of people around. I sang out a few notes just to hear my voice echo. Our car was parked at the side, near a low wall, above which was open air and a view overlooking the city. I was headed straight for the car, but Andy (12, and a very whimsical sort of person who picks up very well on the beautiful moments) walked over to the wall and peeked over it. My first thought was, "Let's hurry to the car so we can go home." To my surprise, Mother and Amy slowly wandered over too. A long time ago, I might have been the first one to do so - paused to admire the view...seriously paused, not just a passing glance at how beautiful it was. As all this registered in my mind, I took a deep breath and walked over too. (Daddy just waited at the car, lol.)

I leaned my arms on the wall and breathed the air, which was surprisingly cool and fresh and free of exhaust, despite that we were downtown. It was a summery smell, like rain mixed with dry leaves. But the air wasn't damp. Such a rare, unique smell. I looked at the skyscrapers, with their glass windows reflecting collages of the lighted windows in other skyscrapers. We must have been reflected in one of them too, but of course we were too far away to see.

The sky depicted itself in watercolor texture. Neither day blue nor night blue. It had hints of purple in splotches and effervescently reflected the city lights. I had the thought that always, somewhere in the world, night is dawning and day is falling; every moment, darkness creeps over a bit more of the earth and light pours down over another...people waking, people falling asleep. The people of earth have every moment of the day covered. But of course, you say. We all know that! But at the moment it seemed very wondrous...like realizing a well-known fact all over again.

And pausing - consciously pausing, not just in passing - felt so foreign to me that I realized that I had almost forgotten how to relax. I don't do it as voluntarily as I used to. It always seems we're in a race to keep up with time as it passes. But the fact is that time will always be a step ahead of us! So perhaps that is why, if we know how to stop every once in awhile...it actually feels like stopping time! Because we then get the upper hand. We can stop, while time can't. Like the tagline for an article I saw in a French Reader's Digest, "Gagnez du temps sans courir" - i.e., "Gain on time without running" :)