Today we went to Hakone Gardens with our youngest.  Our last stop was the zen garden.

“What’s Zen?” asked the lad.

“It’s when you are just in the here and now.  You don’t think about what happened before or worry about what happens after.  You are just in the moment.”

He was quiet for a second.

And then he said, “Oh.  Can we go now?”

But we didn’t go yet.  We sat at this table and I told him we needed to make a memory.  Have you ever done that?  Have you ever stopped what you were doing and said to yourself, “I am going to remember this for as long as I live.”?

I did it when I was a kid.  One time all I was doing was walking down stairs.  But I still remember it.  I remember the carpet on the floor. I remember the latch hook rug hanging on the wall in front of me. I remember it was summer and the downstairs was cooler than the upstairs.  I remember I was going to see my dad who was watching t.v.  I brought him a Pepsi.

It’s stupid.  A memory of nothing.  But it makes me feel alive.

So today we made another one.  Not of the garden but of the three of us sitting at a table, surrounded in nature, doing not much of anything but being together.

Remember this.