The memory that comes to mind each day, keeps me smiling. One day Long ago, when I picked up my daughter from her classroom. She said this profound statement; “Dad, if you see someone without a smile, give them your smile.”

Thoughts rushed through my head on the wisdom of my six-year-old. She continued, “Dad, you have the best smile even when things are tuff. I believe if you share your smile it will make people happy like it does me.”

It has been 61 years now and it is fresh as the day it happened.

Hope the mask can come off, and smiles reappear on the faces of all mankind. Even so, the eyes are the window to the heart. I can see a smile, even with a mask covering the face. It comes from the heart of each person.

Me and my cousins were playing name place animal thing in the guest lounge shrouded in darkness, the only source of light being the bright purple screens of our phones. Every two minutes one of us would perk up and begin the countdown signalling the end of one game. In this instance it was me.

“One... Two... Three...” I went on in thinly veiled excitement.

“Wait! Tell me a place starting with Z,” Sara yelled out of the blue.

“Zimbabwe,” my cousin Zayn’s monotonous voice boomed in the hall.

“Thanks!”

“Eight... Nine... Ten! Stop typing, suckers!”

We all tallied our scores. Nearly all of us got 20 for each box. That was when I zoomed in on the spelling Sara had used for Zimbabwe.

“Zimbabaway!!!” I announced with a lot of unnecessary fervour.

A snort was heard and then laughter. We doubled over and smacked our thighs while I kept on announcing the spelling loud and clear. I’ve never laughed this much in my life.

I often replay the memory of my puppy standing at the top of our stairs, barking, when my dad tried to climb the stairs to get her. He would bang on the steps and my puppy would bark and stick her booty in the hair, wagging her tail! Me, my mom, and my brothers where standing behind watchting my puppy and laughing our hearts out. Its a few months later and I enjoy watching my puppy roll on her back and bark when she wants attention or running in circles in the yard with a stick in her mouth while we try to catch her. (We can't catch her! She is way to fast and she knows it. She will lay down and the moment we get close to her she takes off! She also knows that she is cute!) It almost her birthday and I can't wait to see what happens when she is two!

I was coming back.

I didn't feel time yet, it all seemed familiar - as if the moment was all there was. Then the soft pressure of the sheets reached me, and my eyes began to adjust. I was coming back.

Back to what? I couldn't remember. The exclamations which swim in my head were, for once, silent and calm. My senses rushed back to me, and I felt the tension again, the subtle tension of modern existence. I would have sighed, but less than a second had passed.

Tick, tick, tick. Went the clock in my head again, and with it came the other sounds: the blood in my ears, the rustle of the sheets... and yet I wasn't moving. Then I saw, and the light pierced my eyes. I cautiously ventured another peek, and fell into a daydream. Like a flood, in this vision of a memory, the lives I haven't lived came to me; the sceneries of destiny unfolded, and I saw the branches of time - dividing out to an endless horizon. A bow was in my hands, and I shot an arrow into the landscape before me. The arrow pierced the tree of time, and sunk deep into the moment I had awoken to. The reality of that moment streamed from the wound, enveloped me, and I was free. I knew in my heart - I could never have missed, not even in the face of eternity, becuase my soul had always been aiming, and so had hers. I opened my eyes, and she was smiling. She was my moment, and I wished then that she would be my every moment forever.