When school was cancelled and I was searching for the new routine, my mom and I started taking the older two boys on walks. At first it was 45 mins around our neighborhood. We did scavenger hunts for everyday items, we counted how many basketball hoops there were (quite a few in my neighborhood), we tracked construction progress on a house up the street. Then after about one month of these walks we grew tired of the familiar.

So we ventured off to a new neighborhood. And then another. And another. In some ways, during this time of my world getting smaller it has actually become bigger. I have ventured to neighborhoods I used to pass on my way to the next activity. I never would have dreamed of stopping or exploring.

Each new location seems a bit more daring than the last. Some we return to often. Others we try once or twice. Recently our most adventurous walk took us to the belly of the Arroyo River. For those of you not from LA, our rivers out here are giant cement valleys with small trickles of stream (if we are lucky) moving slowly towards the ocean. We started dropping leaves in the stream to watch them travel away from us, like miniature boats, braving rapids. The boys could have stayed there all day.

Finally it was time to go. As I turned from this transporting moment, watching two young boys find adventure in the ordinary, I saw two people up the stream. They turned from the water and walked up the other side of the river towards their home, old tents and shopping carts clustered together. I turned back to coax my boys to leave the stream and by the time I was once again headed in their direction, they were gone.

Some would think that this sighting might have removed some of the beauty of this experience. But their presence dissipated the mysticism of the moment and made it real. No longer a nice walk we had, jumbled with all the other silly adventures we’ve taken during this time. They offered an ache to an almost saccharine moment. An ache that created such a vivid hue to the future memory, that I couldn’t help but wonder if all beauty is made more pungent by the world’s imperfections.