#190 Our Best Day

by Natalie Wood

Our best day was the day we dared.

We hit the road at noon, eyes puckered against the piercing lights of a faultless sky.

Then speeding on, ever-faster, our tiny car became a mountain goat, fairly skipping, prancing through ring-slim, beribboned, be-tasselled trails, whose ends uncoiling, frayed slowly, to the gentle embrace of the yielding hills.

We stopped to rest and in the still moment you whispered: “You—and the day—I’m young again. Sixteen once more.”

“Me, too!,” I sighed. Then scrambling, trembling, hillside kids, we delved, dived to where all fragrance met, plucking, savaging wild and secret fruits, their seething juices blue and purple-black. Fervid, then wedded, finally spent.

Brief silence. Adrift. Dozing. Gorged. Happiness complete.

But we were briskly stirred. Blinking, returned to earth.

“Nice day for it, then?”

Giggling, we nodded, most contrite. Then staggered homeward, half-drunk on our feast of private plums just pulled.

Somersaulting, freewheeling ever downward, at last we crashed into the trailing fleece of the dying, citrus-cinnamon-scented sun.

“Time for bed?” you asked.

“Of course!” I said.