It’s just the three of us. My boyfriend, his best friend, and me.

We are a threesome. I love Jim, I think. He’s handsome, athletic, and he treats me like a flower.

But I really like John, Jim’s best friend and roommate. He’s a thinker, a philosopher, a Henry Thoreau look alike, only better looking.

So, I have the best of both worlds. And on this lazy Saturday evening, when most of our college friends are at the frat houses drinking beer and dancing to the D.J., John suggests, “let’s drive to the top of the mountain.”

We’re all juniors at a college nestled between mountains in Pennsylvania. Usually it’s cloudy, so I never bother looking at those mountains. But on a rare clear day, I hunger to get out of campus and see what’s on top of the world.

We drive in Jim’s orange Rambler, about 10 years too old to be decent and probably the ugliest car in PA, if not the world. But it gets us now chug chug chugging up the long winding narrow road. Up, up, more UP. We don’t pass a single car. In a college town, bars and fraternities and even the Howard Johnson’s nearby are more seductive to the population.

Finally, after about a 40-minute slow climb, we get to the top and find a small dirt area to park the car. The night is dark – so dark, without a light to be seen around us.

John, always the think-ahead guy, opens the trunk and brings out a large blanket. He spreads it on the green slope before us, and without a word, the three of us plunk down, flat on our backs, arms behind our heads, looking up at the now darkened sky. 

And that’s when I see it. The UNIVERSE! The black void above me is not black after all, but full of bright tiny diamonds that blink off and on, like a Morse code to 20-year-old me.

I hear a loud yet silent message: 

THIS IS Real. This is. You are insignificant.

 Look at the vastness surrounding you.

This is Life.

I’m flabbergasted. I’m aghast. I’m finally realizing I have no idea of who I am and where I fit into this space in college, in between these men, in L I F E.

I widen my eyes further. This is what’s REAL! I can’t talk. Actually, none of us do. We realize, in that minute, on the top of the mountain, that our existence is the opposite of momentous.

That we are bits of sand strewn on Earth.

John starts crying, just a tiny bit. He finds my hand and holds it. Jim seems to have fallen asleep.

I know that I will never forget this moment in my time. 

                                           Designed by Freepik.

What is/was a MOMENTOUS time in your life?