one of the ten best days

My friend H has me reading a new book ... "Heaven" by Alcorn. So far it is interesting, but not riveting ... it takes me a while to warm up to a book. I used to sometimes stay with a book for hours on end ... the Clavell books ... maybe I will read Shogun again. Recently read, "the ten best days of my life" by Adena Halpern, definitely a kind of girly book ... with an interesting message. A young woman dies and goes to heaven ... it rocks ... but in order to stay in the ultimate state of bliss she must write an essay ... yes, on the ten best days of her life ... and as she does that, she learns what was truly precious about the life she was living. It is provocative and out of the box.

"Hmmm, what an interesting gem to ponder in the middle of a wakeful night ... I like to think about what my ten best days have been so far. I know I am supposed to say ... the day I got married, or the day my child was born ... Hallmark days ... so from that track, I make the slightest detour ... because those were great days (no brainers, this is supposed to be an exercise)... I started making some rules. I tell myself it can't be any of the cliched days ... it can't be an easy thoughtless answer. How does one organize this type of list? I begin riffling through those storage boxes of sepia-toned memories, looking for the precious few that really stand out. I don't know what the end result will be, but I think it will be fun to re-capture some of the best days ... worth a try, while I wait for a future best day (the day I start logging dual given).

Here is a possibility:
When I was in third grade, my school class went on a field trip to the Houston Planetarium. The plush indigo swathed seat was too big for me but I figured out how to move it into a bit of a reclining position by pushing against the seat in front of me ... I did that after the lights went down because I knew it was wrong to put my feet on the furniture (except in the dark apparently and only when one's mary-janed feet couldn't reach the floor). The planetarium was truly magical ... transporting me through time and space. The experience was surreal ... really, everything real fell away to somewhere in the shadows, making room for only this perfect timeless moment. I am certain that I sat there wide eyed, probably unblinking, absorbing. I've been to several planetariums since ... and have never felt the earth fall away as it did that first time. A mental snapshot of that halcyon day re-loaded suddenly (and unbidden, like a pop-up right in the middle of some important googling) several years ago when I was practicing stall recovery technique on a pitch dark night. I chose a star as my reference point ... and as the airplane pitched down in to a full stall, the mechanical trappings seemed to fall completely away leaving me there alone with the distant light, and just for a minute ... not a minute, a second, while time stood still ... I had that exact same feeling of connection to something out there rendered by the night sky. What is it that embraces us?
I remember that day ... had to be in the late sixties ... when I was imprinted with awe. That has got to be one of the ten best days.