I wrote this in the summer of 2015 about a trip to Nicaragua with my then partner. The relationship ended in that same year, but I think the sentiment of this essay is still true. Just because something ends doesn’t mean it wasn’t worthwhile.
*The subject’s name has been changed for privacy.
I love looking through old photos of traveling or family gatherings and comparing how my memory of those events stacks up against the captured, static reality of the camera lens. The interplay between these realities is what we call nostalgia. It allows me to to hit the play button between each picture and fill in the gaps with my far less reliable memories. I love that gray area. It’s like an old film, the audio isn’t perfect and the picture is just the right amount of hazy.
I often seem to find myself more attached to my memory of an event than a photograph of it; the memory is mine, it’s not on facebook or on a phone or in a photo album. I get to play it in forward and reverse, manipulate little details, and be the director of my life’s greatest hits compilation. Supplementing these little movies with photographs of travel or events keeps me honest about what really happened, but they ultimately serve as a starting point, not an end in and of itself.
But, sometimes a moment comes along that is perfect as is, and I wish I could snap a picture to preserve that small moment in time. A perfect example of this phenomenon happened when I was on vacation in Nicaragua in July of 2015. Unfortunately I wasn’t cognizant enough to take my camera out and preserve it. I was swept up in the event, and by the time I realized it, it was too late. That, I suppose, is why I am writing this down here. It’s the only other means I have to capture the moment as it happened without my memory losing the details entirely.
I was sitting in the bed of a grey and dented pickup truck, bouncing and enjoying the wind in my hair. The sun was shining above me, it was just after noon and the furious humidity of the region was starting to really set in. We were driving back to San Juan del Sur from a nearby beach where I had spent the morning learning to surf with limited success. The road was bumpy, made from dirt. Carved out around the trees of the nearby forest, it looped in and out of people’s yards and past farms, cattle and stray dogs lazily trying to survive the midday heat. I was exhausted, beaten by the waves and sand, my feet cut from the rocks, and wildly hungry. I sat in the back right corner of the bed of the truck, legs outstretched and aching, arms around the gate and the side to brace for the bumps, happy with the day, with the trip, with life, with everything.
I was content just then, but it wasn’t the perfection I wish I had captured.
I looked across the bed of the truck to the corner opposite mine and saw something that I never want to forget. A girl sat there, arms around the corner of the truck like mine, golden skin glistening with sand, salt and sun. To say she was beautiful is nothing. In that moment she was transcendent. Her turquoise tank top hung around her shoulders, a bright red swimsuit strap contrasted against the golden tan of her neck and the green of her shirt. She wore jean shorts and flip flops, her legs extended across the bed of the truck and crossed elegantly. Her face, obscured by a pair of sunglasses, came to a sharp point at her chin, and was framed with a halo of sun bleached light brown hair tied into a loose bun that was beginning to slip. Her hair bounced and tugged away with every bump in the dirt road and the halo grew larger and more appealing. She looked forward, around her side of the truck, taking in the countryside and balanced amidst the bumpy ride with far more poise than I possessed.
I was transfixed by her beauty, her aura manipulated my perspective on world. It was like she came into ultra sharp focus right in front of me. The picturesque, equatorial forest behind her, like none I had ever seen before, was merely an attractive frame, simultaneously more beautiful and less important because of her. With her as the subject, any background would have been gorgeous.
It’s possible I was staring. In fact, I am sure I was. My mind was both working in overdrive to absorb all these new details, and stuck, unable to process it all. I simply couldn’t look away. She must have felt me looking at her. Suddenly, with the impeccable timing I’ve learned she unknowingly possesses, Lisa Anne Ashton turned her focus to me. Saw me staring. And smiled.
That smile was one of the most perfect moments of my life. I wish that I had been ready to take a picture right then, preserve it for all time. I felt weightless when her eyes connected with mine and I knew without actually knowing that I was participating in something extraordinary. It was one of those fleeting times in life when you know it is perfect and you are helplessly lost in the seconds as they tick by. All you can do is try to exist in it as long as possible. You wish the moment could last forever, but you only get that feeling after the moment has passed. When it is happening, you can’t hear or feel or think about anything except what is happening in front of you.
I remember everything and nothing about those seconds when her eyes connected with mine. I remember her, I remember overwhelming happiness, I remember that it felt perfect. That it still does. As with all memories, my recollection of the event can never actually recreate the moment. But revisiting the memory allows one to understand everything that went into a specific moment and appreciate them all the more.
Thinking back on that smile brings about smaller, more manageable doses of the elation I experienced in the bed of the truck. And when I consider everything that went into that moment, I am even more amazed that it happened at all. She had spent four weeks alone in Nicaragua and had been distant from me when I arrived, like she was grappling with some new part of the puzzle of life that she didn’t even know existed. Her parents were there too, and she seemed stressed as a result. We were staying in a beautifully ornate house owned by some expat Americans that stood in terrible contrast with the poverty of the country. She was tired, hungry and frustrated at being stuck at the beach for so long. She was sunburnt, ready for home and guilty about missing her first world luxuries. In other words, she had every reason not to smile.
And yet, here is this perfect image of her in my head: radiating happiness across the truck bed, she’s beautiful for myriad reasons, and I am happy just to be there with her. The image of her in that truck, like her smile that accompanied it, is something I can keep just for myself.
It occurs to me that this reality, my memory of that day and of her, is far better than a photograph. A photograph would show the background and the foreground as equal, but they weren’t. A photograph could never capture how I felt when she looked at me. A photo would, by its very nature, crop the whole episode as a smaller moment in a photo album. It captures a moment in time, but doesn’t tell you what happened just before or after it. What did happen was much larger, much simpler and much more beautiful as a result.
For that and for her, I am especially grateful.