Redefining Vivid
“Mom listen to this.”
It’s another morning in our house in the age of a pandemic, day 327 (or is 429? 1,942,853? I lost track.)
I recognize I’m being dramatic. But there is a lot to feel grumpy about these days. It’s oppressively hot. My allergies that typically arrive at the end of August feel especially ominous this year. We’re bored with summer. It was another painful news cycle this morning. It’s just, you know, *gestures around the room that already seems to be messy at 7:00 AM* everything.
Maybe I just need more coffee (there’s another title for my 2020 Memoir.) Caroline has an eager smile on her face so I pretend to listen on my way to the coffee pot.
“So, I was typing an email and when I tried to type covid it changed it to vivid. Ha! Isn’t that funny? Vivid.” She giggles.
I’m trying to figure out which part I should be laughing at—the fact that my baby I am CERTAIN I only delivered yesterday is sending an email, or the fact that autocorrect thinks covid and vivid are interchangeable words. Because neither seems very funny to me at the moment.
“That IS funny,” I say, using my perfected fake interested mom voice on my quest to refuel my coffee mug.
Ha. Vivid. What is vivid about covid? I grumble to myself. I see nothing is vivid about covid.
When the next few sips of coffee make their way into my bloodstream, I’m still thinking about this word “vivid.” I decide to look up the definition. Two descriptions check out with my disdain: “intensely deep or bright” and “lively and vigorous.” Nope. Not feeling any of that today.
But there is one definition that brings me pause: “producing powerful feelings or strong, clear images in the mind.”
I am certainly producing powerful feelings around here, there is no denying that. But it’s leaving me wonder about the strong and clear images. Looking around my home in what feels like our real time movie mashup of Groundhog’s Day meets Panic Room meets Cast Away, it’s difficult to imagine my days as strong and clear images worth collecting.
If you squint in the distance you can spot the Great Sand Dunes miles before you arrive. Driving across the wide open high plains of Colorado, mountain ranges surrounding you on all sides, at first it looks just like a little sand hill.
It’s not until you arrive at the base of the dunes with your children marching in front of you adding a tiny yet brightly colored contrast to it’s mighty desert landscape that you recognize why they received this title.
Great doesn’t come close to describe their majesty.
This wasn’t my first visit here. I came with my family when I was Caroline’s age and then again with Mike and Caroline when she was a year old. Still, I stared in awe.
I’ve always loved travel and adventure, but doing this with children adds an entirely new layer. Sure, it also adds the stress and the whining and the snacks, so many snacks. But if you can see past that, exploring as a family allows you to see the world in a whole new perspective. Watching my children run toward those dunes with shrieks of delight and joy was an adventure in itself.
We trekked up the dunes, winds whipping the sand around our faces. Running through sand up and down hills is not easy. But it is also a sensation, when matched with wonder, that evokes smiles and giggles you can’t suppress. We ran up and down those dunes, followed ridgelines, made sand angels, slid on our bottoms. I am searching for a word greater than fun and coming up short. It was so much more than that. But it was also so much of that. In the middle of a global pandemic, fun just might be the pinnacle of joy.
Closing my eyes today I can picture that day on top of the Great Sand Dunes. I can hear the wind swirling sand around us and see the dots of my children as they rolled down. I feel the cool creek squishing through my toes and the sand soft in my hands (and in my hair and ears for days later.) I see my children’s joy, and my own reflecting back.
The images of that experience are lively and vigorous, intense and bright, creating clear images I see still today, and I imagine long after.
Now THAT is what I would call vivid.
Because I have exhausted all creative ideas at this point in the summer: quarantine edition, I decide a bike ride to Target to pick up our drive up order will be the big adventure of the day. They whine but don’t seem to come up with any alternative ideas that don’t involve a screen request, so we helmet up and push down the driveway. It’s 6 miles round trip on side streets and bike trails so not difficult but also probably not normal to roll up into the Super Target parking lot in the suburb outside of town with a bike trailer attached to a tagalong bike and an eight year old on a one speed bike. But here we are. Summer 2020. This is as vivid as it gets today.
Or maybe not.
There is a point on the bike trail following a climb with a long downhill that winds and curves along trees and marshy lands before you hit the mega stripmall complex. I would never describe this as a thing of wonder. But children have a way of seeing things differently.
“Wheeeeeeeee!” the sounds of a toddler and five year trail behind me as we whip down the hill.
“Wow look at that mom! It’s a whole family of ducks on that swampy water!” the eight year old shouts and points ahead of me.
“Cool!” the five year old shouts back and then the toddler repeats, even though I know he can’t see from his vantage point.
The downhill roller coaster and wildlife viewing lasts mere seconds. We hit the intersection and make our way into the concrete parking lot. But for those few seconds, there was wonder. There was awe. There was delight.
I dare say the experience was vivid.
I won’t have any pictures of this adventure in our memory books like I do of the Great Sand Dunes. My children won’t be telling their children about the time they took a bike ride to Target and “boy would you believe we went down this big hill and then saw some ducks!”
When we look back on this time maybe the images won’t be lively or vigorous, maybe they won’t be intense or bright. They certainly won’t be as vivid as the bigger adventures like climbing great mountains of sand. I have to think, though, what will be vivid are the other part of that definition, the powerful feelings of joy and delight, even in the mundane adventures, like a bike ride to Target.
As we make our way back home, I notice the trailer is a bit heavier with our order but my spirit is significantly lighter than it was this morning. As we crest over the hill and glide back down, I can’t help but to squeal right along with my children.
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Because sometimes pictures and words aren’t quite enough, I put together a quick video of clips from our summer adventures, another way to capture the vivid.