I assigned my creative writing students a lengthy brain dump: Name five moments you remember. I gave no other guidance on the moments themselves; I did not indicate they needed to be significant in any way, or funny, tragic, life-changing, anything. Just five moments. In addition, I wrote, why did you choose those moments; I mean, why do you think your memory pulled those up?

Of course, most people have trouble narrowing it down. I believe we simply don’t want to choose the wrong ones, as if later—and this is true—we will think of even better (or more horrific) moments we should have mentioned. But the point is to consider the mental tether to those particular moments that they rose to the top in an internal sea of experience. Can you think of five?

Being the dutiful professor, here are mine, listed, as I instructed them, in the order they came into my head.

1. Location: On a train headed from Santiago, Spain, back to Pamplona, Summer of ’14. I looked to the south as we headed east and I saw pilgrims walking in the mid-day sun, backpacks on, walking sticks out front, side by side, laughing and talking, and it took me up short. We had spent more than a month crossing Spain and after walking for weeks and weeks, we adjusted to that lifestyle. That is where we belonged, out there. Psychologists say if we make something part of your routine for three weeks, our system adjusts enough to expect it every day. That happened to me. Being on the train was wrong; I wanted to pull some brake cord and jump off, join them, head back towards Santiago. It was at that moment I knew I’d walk that Camino again because that is where I belong, not on a train. It took no time at all, none, for me to have the clarity that I knew exactly where I should be. How rare is that?
2. Location: The salt flats on the Great Salt Lake, Utah. Summer of ’22. We walked across a good part of the dry lakebed whose shoreline under normal conditions was well behind us. To the left was the amazing Spiral Jetty, well out in front of us to the west was a golden sunset with laser like reach picked up by the glistening salt flats, and right in front of us on some rocks were two glasses of champagne. There are moments you remember all your life, made more special by the once completely inconceivable notion that they’d ever happen to begin with–a chance to hang out with and laugh with someone you thought you’d never see again as you finish each other’s sentences as the salt seeps through your shorts. This was one of those moments.
3. Location: Between cars on the trans-Siberian railway. Summer of ’13. Michael and I spent a good deal of time in these passageways, him playing harmonica, me watching the lush landscape flee behind us. That moment brings me such peace as it is filled with nearly nothing. We have no possessions with us save his harp and my curiosity. We stood, standing still while barreling west, outside of the main cabin on the train with cool air coming through the passageway, but inside, safe, a private viewing room of sorts. I can still feel that rumble, hear his tunes, the sound of the door swooshing open when someone passes through and nods, pauses to hear Michael play. We always need to find a place to center ourselves, find our footing.
4. Location: Bayside Hospital, Virginia Beach. Summer of ’96. Michael had slipped on some playground equipment and a bolt when into his skull above his eye. We rushed to the hospital where we waited in the ER waiting room for hours despite a hole in my three-year-old’s head. It was freezing and my shirt was off as it had been completely blood-soaked. Finally they took us back after two hours of Michael walking around holding a cloth to his gapping hole looking at people asking what they were in for. “What’s wrong with you?” he’d ask. “Where’s your other arm?” Finally, the doctor sewed his head while he sat on my lap and counted stitches along with the nurse. He didn’t cry, nothing. Just eyed the orange juice boxes and cookies on a nearby table. When they were done, he jumped down and asked if he could have a cookie. I sat with my head between my legs, feeling fainter than I had ever been. Then a cookie appeared before my eyes and I looked up, and he said, “Here Daddy. Have my cookie. It looks like you need it more than I do.” You’re never too old to sometimes admit you just need a cookie.
5. Location: Heckscher State Park, Long Island. Summer of ’75. I would be moving to Virginia in three days. My best friend of six years, Eddie, and I hiked one more time, one last time, through the state park behind our neighborhood on the Great South Bay. We’d hiked every inch of that place, knew every creek, every trail. We climbed the old dilapidated beach cabana, the old garage in the woods, the old estate house, all buildings gone nearly half a century now. That last day we hiked for hours, and Eddie said we needed to plan something so we knew we’d see each other again. We had been singing songs; I was just learning guitar so I sang some I had just learned, and we both would sing as we hiked. Beatles, Harry Chapin, John Denver, and hits of the day like “Seasons in the Sun,” and some others. We had just sung, “Cats in the Cradle” when he said, “So let’s plan something.” We did. We decided we would someday get a car and drive the entire perimeter of the country and write a book about it. I said we absolutely had to do that and Eddie laughed and said, “We will! If I live that long!” and we sang more Chapin.

Just over forty years later we spoke on the phone again for the first time since that day. We spoke for hours, and then again, and again, and finally he said, “We still need to take that drive and write that book.” I told him, no kidding, two childhood best friends become friends again half a century later and drive around the country—this is a book waiting to happen. Really, I said, we have to do this! I can write this book, I told him. He had just finished reading my collection Borderline Crazy and said he thought the same thing, that we must do this. He said it was inevitable and he really believed we would make this happen, but he didn’t live long enough.

“Time is paper thin,” wrote Toni Wynn.

Sometimes someone you think you’ll never see again shows up and reminds you of who you are. Sometimes someone you are certain you’ll see is suddenly gone and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it but remember those moments, these moments that I’ve been lucky enough to have a lifetime of.

Life should be a long string of these moments. It’s all there is.