Blue

Do you remember how everything always seemed. . . more when you were a kid? Bigger, longer or just better? Maybe it was just an issue of scale--we were small and the world was big. I prefer to think it was an issue of wonder--we were in awe and the world was amazing. And somewhere over the years, we lost that sense of awe. The world shrunk, and things weren't quite as amazing.

One of my earliest memories is of being convinced that the sky in Colorado was bluer than anywhere else I'd ever been, bluer than anywhere else in the world. It was the kind of blue that was more than just a color; it was a blue that soaked into your soul and shook you alive. The sky everywhere else seemed dim and drab and lifeless in comparison.

For years, as I've moved around the country, I have romanticized that sky. But everytime I go home, I prepare myself for that inevitable shock of discovering that this too--like everything else from my childhood--is not as grand as I remember.



Here's the funny thing, though: I've never been disappointed. I walk off a plane, and the Colorado sky is still the color of my memories, of my daydreams. If anything it's brighter and bolder, making my memories look like pale pastel watercolor versions of a technicolor reality.



I don't ever know quite what to make of this fact. For now I accept it as a gift, perhaps a little cautiously, fearing that someday it will get taken away. It's a gift of more than just a sky color, however: it is a little piece of my childish wonder, reminding me that the world is, in fact, as amazing as I once thought.