It’s peculiar how often the best days come without planning or anticipation.  So eccentric are the moments that become the most cherished in our hearts yet were completely unexpected when the sun first peaked its head above the tree line, through the curtains, and into the eyes of one slumbering soul.  However atypical, these moments are real.  They are unexpected but also the most valuable of all experiences.  More often than not, they are the pillars of our reminiscing, the happy place we reflect on as we go through rough patches, the subject of the ache we feel inside when we wish to go back just once more and relive that one night before the light goes out forever.  Treasures, these moments are; they fill one’s heart whenever they emerge in a daydream or come up while reliving old times.  However, the most wonderful, yet dreadful, feeling is the heartache of identifying one of those moments as it happens, and being powerless to stop it, unable to hold on to it forever.  All one can do is watch as it passes by and attempt to hold on to each and every detail if only to mourn it later.

Even in my short life of seventeen years, I have lived many moments that my heart both aches and swells with joy to look back on, but few contain a moment of lucidity in which I realized my peculiar situation while it was happening.  However, one night in August of my sixteenth year, clarity took me in its grasp; and upon me it bestowed the realization that the moment taking place would never happen again, yet it was one of the happiest moments I would ever experience.  Shocked by this epiphany, I froze in place and observed my surroundings. 
My top half resting on a square, foam raft as my feet paddled behind me, I traveled toward a volleyball floating on the far edge of the pond near the tree line at the back of my property.  I looked from the ball spinning slowly as the waves pushed it farther away to the group of over a dozen teens standing in the shallow end splashing each other in the absence of their ball.  We had been playing volleyball without a net, boys against girls, and the girls were now screaming and acting absolutely terrified of the boys as if they were splashing acid in their faces instead of murky water. 

With a smirk at my own hilarity, I stared past the group of completely stereotypical teens to a more atypical group.  They stood far off from the shore near a volleyball net situated amidst the green, freshly cut grass that decorated the lawn between the small one story house I called home and the pond where I lived in the summer.  Wes and Michelle were alone together, but they didn’t seem to mind at all.  One of the cutest and most underrated couples in the high school, they were nerds, total nerds, and it showed in what they were doing, or attempting to do, that is.  Wes held the volleyball on one side of the net and tried to whack it over to Michelle.  The ball caught on the net; he picked it up, tried again, and again the ball soared right into the net.  They hit the ball back and forth, Michelle always gaining the upper hand, her being the more athletic of the two, until Wes, tired of losing, awkwardly sprinted to the other side of the net, chucked the ball at Michelle, missed, then decided to engulf her in his abnormally large arms.  “Wes, don’t you dare!” protested Michelle right before the two collided.  As they dropped to the plush earth laughing and looking adorable, I chuckled and moved my gaze to the campfire on their left as the charred scent of the flamboyant flames floated in my direction. 

There sat a small, auburn-haired boy who looked like he needed to consume five cheeseburgers every day for a week before he would be a normal weight, a dark-haired girl with her new Crocs that her boyfriend, lounging to her right, had just given her, and further to their right another couple taking up only one chair, exceedingly touchy feely those two.  I marveled at the fact that conversation seemed to be flowing easily between the five at the fire.  They all pledged their loyalty to different cliques, and I caught myself wondering if they had spoken more than a few words to one another in their lives.  Focusing in on their faint voices, I was admittedly intrigued about the topic of their discussion.  “I hate him!” I heard Annie exclaim with a stomp of her yellow Crocs.  I immediately knew who they were talking about.  It’s funny how a shared hatred can bring people together.  From there, I looked behind the fire at the picnic table where a few of my girl friends sat chatting and laughing like they always do.  A grin appeared on my face as they ate the food I had stomach ached over, hoping I was buying what everyone liked. 

Proud of my abilities to feed my best friends successfully, I looked to the right and far behind them at the swing set decorated with the three primary colors near the cement where the basketball hoop towered over the patch of cement in front the house.  Although it was quite a distance away, I was able to see the last bit of the party having a blast to my delight.  Christine and Tony were on the swings, their newly formed connection evident in the giggles I heard all the way from my distant spot in the murky blue water.  Christine was notorious for her many different, and quite loud, laughs that could be heard wherever she went.  While they could sometimes be unwelcome, her thundering belts of laughter warmed my heart in that moment.  I looked past the latest couple as the waves splashed against my warm skin and found some boys playing a pickup game with my teammate Jo.  That girl’s hands were like magic, and she could ball it up with the best of them.  As I watched, she flew in for the rebound, and the ball stuck right to her hands as if it were covered in two-sided tape.  Soaring above the dense chatter of voices, loud shouts of  “Oh come on” and “Someone stop her” could be heard across the neighborhood.
Thus ending my thorough sweep of the beauty laid out in front of my eyes, I did a quick glance once more and marveled at the chaotic scene as I floated in the peaceful water.  People everywhere smiling, laughing, and eating without a care in the world.  I made sure to soak up the love in the eyes of the many couples as they gazed at one another, not guarding their affection like when walking the halls of the school.  I listened carefully to Michelle’s and Wes’ sweet laughter as it mixed with Christine’s wails and the screams of the girls still being splashed in the shallow end.  The fire crackled as it reached out with its sweltering limbs and touched the cheeks of those sitting around it.  Most of all, I recognized the sheer feeling of happiness that was radiating off of everyone in my presence.  How often does this happen?  I asked myself as I floated on the raft.  When have you ever seen so many different people all together and enjoying one another like this?  As the weight of the realization that this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience fully settled on my heart, I felt a surge of tears well up in my eyes.  I wasn’t necessarily sad, just beyond touched at the beauty that had been done even just once in my life.  I marveled at my luck that something so magnificent could even happen in the world we live in, and I took it all in, as much of it as I could, because I knew it was a fleeting and one-of-a-kind moment.

Already have there been falling outs, and soon there will be graduations, too.  We will go our separate ways, and all that will be left is the memory of a time far simpler than the ones we will be living, far more beautiful and pure than the hardships we face in the future.  Only the memory of the night when everyone was at peace with life will keep us going as we trudge ahead into whatever life brings.