Best Days

Have you ever considered your 10 best days? Assigning a small number to a "top" list always makes it harder to decide which items really make the cut, but what about your top 100, so there is plenty of room on the list for those days that don't really stand out, but you know they were there and involved friends and sunshine and good food, or a great movie, or the snow day that you didn't expect that actually came when you hadn't finished your report or studied for that exam.

One of my top days was the day that Baby Renee was born. I was a doula (birth assistant) for two friends of mine. I don't think that there is a higher honor that someone could give me than to allow me to be present during one of the most intimate and life changing experiences there is. I remember getting the call in the middle of the night, grabbing my bag, rushing to a cab, flying to the hospital, thanking god the cabbie got lost to give me time to calm down before I actually arrived.

The birthing room had an entire wall of windows looking out over lush greenery and the Charles river. Night turned to dawn and Renee was born in the early morning hours. I felt inducted into a club. I was one of those people who had seen a miraculous event. I had watched the world expand by one.

Another top ten day was my wedding day, which was six years ago tomorrow. My sister flew in to Sweden from India, tan and wrapped in blue silk. Kim and Anne flew in from the States, along with part of my family. Yuval's immediate family came in from Israel. We all stayed together in a little hotel with gorgeous wood panelling and Scandinavian breakfasts. I had dreaded spending that much time in that close of a proximity to my divorced parents spending that much time that close to each other. But they passed that test with flying colors. We met a woman over breakfast from South America who had been nominated for the Nobel peace prize and was on her way to meet the committee. World peace, family peace, personal peace: we don't often get much of any of these. It was amazing how they all aligned for one day.

Another top day was my first day in Jerusalem in 2000, but we'll skip that for now.

One of my top tens was in high school. Andrew and I drove up to meet our friends in Millcreek canyon in the fall. The leaves were so orange and red that the scenes seem golden in my memory. We dipped bread sticks in creamy tomato soup. That's all I remember from that day. That, and falling asleep thinking, this was a top tenner.

Another top tenner was just before I left Boston. I had planned a Girls' Night In with 5 or 6 girlfriends. I had stocked up on Trader Joe's food and baked a dark chocolate, ginger, wasabi, whipped cream cake big enough to feed an army. But then the snow started falling, and falling, and falling. "I don't want you all to get stuck here over night," I called each woman and told them I was cancelling. Their response? "We want to get stuck!" And so, they came, with overnight bags and sleeping bags and the six or so of us stayed up discussing sex and politics and life, and checking the weather report, laughing until the wee hours. At one point we ran outside laughing and freezing, watching the snow fly down into the empty streets. Early in the morning, we all found spots in my tiny one bedroom apartment and settled down to sleep. A group of friends like these- irreplaceable.

There are more good days, obviously, as I am nowhere near ten, let alone 100, but it is also 4:30 am, and I am hoping to get a little more sleep. But already I see a pattern. My top days are almost always those days when I am surrounded by people I love and when I feel loved and when there is something shared between us- whether it is small and simple: an autumn day, a city or a snowstorm, or more complex and rare: a birth, or a marriage. And of course, the gratitude, that reminds me in the moment that not everyone has days like these, friends like these, family like this, and cements the images in my mind.