Colors

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I like to follow fashion. I find it to be interesting of course. But also very satisfactory in that fashion is very fluid--always changing and circling back for reinvention and reimagination. I crave change just about more than I crave anything in my life. On Monday my living room will look entirely different than it does on Friday. My kids can so testify. They range from loathing this compulsion of mine, to being indifferent. All said, they mostly roll their eyes.

But my kids are always changing too. And so is my relationship to Christopher. In fact, just last night we sat in bed together and decided on some changes in our relationship. I don't get sick of people as much as I get tired when relationships don't move. If I could, I would live in a kaleidoscope and make all my favorite people move in with me. Together we'd experience a lifetime of moving colors and shapes and never ever get bored.

When my kids are born I assign them a color. I say assign because it's really my choice and it's really just for organization (we color code everything around here--towels, bowls, cups, utensils and it keeps things so orderly! Consider that a tip from me to all the parents of young kids!). When Iris was born she showed up at the same time as the sunrise so I gave her the color yellow. And when her curly hair grew in the color of straw I knew it was a perfect fit. Yellow tea cups, yellow mugs, yellow shoes. And as early as she could talk she went around asking folks what their favorite color was, "What's your favorite color? Mine is yellow."

But lately she's into red. Red dresses with sequins that shoot hundreds of reflections on to the wall when she dances in the light by the window. Red devil's horns on her head. Red lipstick stolen from Erin's "special drawer" (for special things). She spends her day digging into her siblings drawers to amass a greater collection of red clothing.

I want my children to change. I want them to change all their lives. Not just which colors they love the most, but what they believe about the world and what they want as they live in it. I try to prepare myself for the constant change of our relationships. Once they needed me to feed them and carry them. Now they need me to help them learn their times tables and give them screen time boundaries. But someday, I will need them to teach me about the world and help me change my light bulbs--if in fact at that point in time it's still a necessity. (I sorta hope it's not though! I love inventions!)

However, I suppose the tricky thing about being in love with change is that it becomes the anti-change. When you're predictably perpetual, are you really changing?

And one more thing, I also love to wear all red. Or all of one color at one time, really. Fashion taught me to be proud of my natural propensity to dress monochromatic. And now I have a daughter who does it too. So really, what exactly is changing around here? Kinda seems to me everything is more or less the same. In the end.
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