Moment.

The 4WD was big and new and shiny, you know the kind, one that has never left the bitumen and probably never will. I was sitting at the table in the park while S slept. I was still sipping my second beer while he had downed his in the usual minimal number of gulps. The view in front of me was laid out in a patchwork of greens and blues; trees, fields, towns and forests all laid out like a checkered tablecloth leading out to sea. I was allowing myself to relax and soak it all in when the vehicle turned off the road and rumbled urgently past me. Doors slammed and the sound of childen laughing rang across the bright green grass. The childen ran past me, laughing, wrestling. A boy of about twelve, a girl of ten or so, their mother herding them, camera in hand.
"Get over by that tree." She ordered, and they laughed, obliging, caught up in their own happiness and in the game they played. "No, not there! By the side, off to one side." The children tussled again, the boy pushed his sister, laughing, she pushed him back, then he hugged her and the camera clicked. Two laughing faces framed by pink frangipani flowers on one side and the distant carpet of the greens hills fading into the ocean on the other. Perfect.
The children ran back past me and I glanced up to catch the mother's eye. She shook her head, flustered, tired out by their energy and volume. I smiled. I wanted to say, "Stop! Enjoy this moment. In two years those children won't run and laugh like that. They will scowl at you when you ask for their photo if they even deign to sit in a car with you on a Sunday afternoon in the first place." But I just smiled. And she herded them back into the car and in a spin of rubber on the gravel they were gone. Children's laughter fading into the exhaust fumes of an oversized 4WD leaving a hurry on a Sunday afternoon.

I am glad they have the photo.