One Eternal Moment

Saturday morning. Sometime in the late 90s. Couldn't tell you what time it was—I hadn't yet learned how to read time. I only knew of now, the past, and the future. I was probably 6 years old. It was morning, the sun was glowing all over my room as it always did when every magic weekend arrived. I climbed out of the top bunk of my bed and in my Little Mermaid nightgown, tip-toed into the living room. No one was ever awake at this time. It was sacred. Just me and the TV. I reached for several VHS tapes and created a sacrosanct line-up of things only my eyes would see in these wee sunlit hours before the alarms would begin to ring. I only wanted moments. Simple scenes and blips from some visual masterpieces. Annie: Just had to grab the scene where they go to the movies and watch Camille dying in her lover's arms. The Swan Princess: Must watch the scene where the heroine also dies, except this time she's saved by the prince and is brought back to life. Anastasia: Absolutely necessary to watch her save her potentially dead lover and then bring him back to life by kicking Russian butt. And lastly, the most hallowed of all footage...my parent's wedding video: No ifs, ands, or buts, their wedding intro always had to be included.

“Our Wedding” is sprawled out on my tiny TV screen in elaborate script, and a little 80's-cartoon-graphic-Cupid arrives on the scene to deliver the powerhouse anthem that had already begun to alter my consciousness and would continue to do so for the rest of my life: “One Moment in Time” by none other than the infinite legend Whitney Houston.

As soon as the first piano keys begin, Cupid's arrow is shot, and suddenly I'm knee deep in the photo-book of my parent's lives. I get to see some of the first photos of my father as a little baby as he grows into the man that I know and adore. The song and the photos find a perfect rhythm, the editing a true master stroke. It hits on my father's high school graduation photo right Whitney's first “DES-STAH-NYYYYY” is released. My heart swells. There he is! The father I love. The hero of the story where I am born.

Ugh, as if my heart can barely take it, the video immediately moves on to my shining lovely mother and creates her story. The next verse begins and here she comes! My father's fated woman. Whitney's voice is really winding up now with pride in her journey as the mysteries of love pool through my body. My mother's shiny bald head takes on the golden curls I know so well as I feel the song lifting to an even greater crescendo. She's here for him, and Dad's here for her, they just don't know it yet. What a beautiful combination of people, and how perfect that the universe created this divine combination and that together they will, as Whitney enormously declares, “feeeeeeel eter-nah-teeeee!”

I'm sitting on our rug, my mouth is agape, and my ears are full. Their photos combine and I see two people intermingling in love. Two souls making an unspoken pact. Their first date. Their high school prom. Their engagement photo. It fades out on Whitney's “You're a winner for a lifetime...” That's it, I get it. Whitney, whose voice touches the highest of our human purpose with its purity of sound, makes it plain with those photos at her side: Winning at life is falling in love. You're not alive, you can't taste the heights, you can't feel that one moment in time unless you love and are loved in return. It's the pinnacle. It's everything. It was my one true dream.

I became possessed by a future-time, a time when all would feel like this heavenly matrimony depicted on screen. I forged and torn asunder relationship after relationship in the sifting and sorting of finding my holy grail. I could take a lot for a while. You could be as mean to me as you wanted as long as it felt like we were destined to be together and that you'd die for me and I for you. My parents fought too, so I thought this was part of the process. But if the image of our own wedding video got murkier and murkier, out you were from my life. Cut! Snip! Gone! On to the next beginning, a new promise of love, and then another great big fall.

After many failed attempts, I began to take on a strategy: maybe if I was just more likable the wedding bells would be inevitable. I became a chameleon. Whoever I was dating got the girl of his dreams. I created myself as the ultimate vessel in service to being loved. I would do anything it took: Gain weight, lose it, make up interests, hide some of my own, dress up, dress down, laugh loudly, be demure. Whatever my boyfriend required, I would be the ultimate supplicant. And yet little would change. There was still great conflict. They were seldom happy. I felt more empty than ever. What would it take to just get the love I was wanting? What was the secret?

With time I began to learn that life and love were those samplings I was looking for. You feel a connection, you feel plugged in for a moment, you feel a kind of love. Not just for that person but for everything that lead you to that moment, and all of the moments like this to come. The poetry of it all! Things will still flow into your experience: conflicts arise, emotional distance can separate you, but only briefly—so long as you just come back to that moment. That holy moment, that holy now, when you forget time, when you get the purity of being alive and just let the moment be. Give it the attention it deserves. One of the best parts of all is that it doesn't just have to be romantic. You can feel it with everybody. Just look into someone's eyes and don't speak, don't move, don't think of anything else, and it's there! There, the moment when you know that you're, as Whitney's song says, “more than you thought you could be.” Your dream is just “a heartbeat away”. It's a shift in consciousness. It's going from one place in your soul and being with someone in another. From fear to love. You don't have to hide, you don't have to please, you don't have to walk away. You can just be.

Recently, I really got the profound impact of this song on me when, my current boyfriend, whom my inner VHS-tape-watching child would say is “the one”, put his hand on my chest to soothe me in a moment of crisis. I took a deep breath and all of a sudden, I heard those unmistakable piano keys, I saw that angel, and I heard Whitney's first few gentle lines: “Each day I live I hope will be a day to give the best of me.” My presence, my being with this kind, sweet moment, was the best I had to give. It's the best all of us have to give.

Tuesday night. February 25, 2020. 6:30 PM. I'm 27 years old. The moon is out. I'm in all black and yet I am not mourning a dream lost. I am living and my dream has come true because I know what love really is: One immaculate moment in time that you can come back to again and again. You're already there. Just press play.