"What colors do you see?" The sun rises over Lake Granby near Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
The sunrise was still hiding behind the Rocky Mountains, casting dark purple shadows across Lake Granby and leaving a few final stars scattered across the sky.
We were facing a 12-hour drive home to Tulsa and our tent refused to be stuffed back into its carrying case.
The car wasn’t even loaded yet and my wife was already talking about where to stop for breakfast.
Breakfast? This wasn’t another leisurely day of vacation. We had to hit the road. And hit it fast.
“Look,” I heard my wife say, in that happy sing-song voice that meant she was talking to our son, not to me. “What colors do you see?”
Colors? Did she know what time it was? We should’ve been halfway to Denver by now.
“Red,” our son said. “And blue. And green. And yellow. And pink. And . . . .”
I looked up. And I saw it.
The sunlight. The clouds. The mountains. The water. The stars.
“And purple,” our son finished. But not just purple. A hundred shades of purple.
And I wondered what else I had missed over the last few days of camping.
How many trails did I hike without stopping to see the trees?
How many streams did I cross without pausing to hear the whitewater ripples?
How many campfire meals did we gulp down because we had to clean-up before dark so we could get to bed early and hurry up the next morning?
How much of life slips past us while we’re too busy to notice?
We stood there and looked for a while. Just looked. Then we carried our stuff to the car and went for cinnamon rolls.
The drive home could wait.
Michael's previous entries
Aug. 24: Annual bill for having a kid: $8,330Aug. 10: The first, scary day of schoolAug. 3: Pre-school books to read, and read, and readAug. 2: Lousy exercise, maybe -- but good family funJuly 27: Sleepless nights, worried about Alzheimer’sJuly 25: TV makes children grow up big and not so strongJuly 20: 'Bad Guys' are real, but they always lose, right?July 19: A parent's worst nightmare, avertedJuly 13: Family dinners don't matter (well, they do, sort of)July 11: What’s a four-letter word for 'indulged young person?'July 9: Scientists discover ‘the Cool Factor’July 3: Andy Griffith: The great American father figureJune 29: Boys are dumb. Girls are ‘Brave.’ But luckily, a plot twist adds nuance June 28: Good thing our parents didn’t keep family photos on transistor radios
