The Color of Water

After vacation, family visits and just "summer stuff" I am trying to get back into a routine with my posts.  As I was thinking the past couple of days about what I wanted to write, as usual it has to be something that just comes natural.  When I try hard nothing comes to mind.

I was driving and as I looked at the beautiful sky I smiled, "skybluepink" I say that like it is all one word because that is what my mother would say.  I never figured out what color exactly that was but when asked her favorite color she would say "skybluepink"  It made me think about how we see things.  If I had to guess (which since she is gone I will have to do) I would say she was referring to the times when the sky would have a faded pink color against the blue hue.  Beautiful yes !  Would I think to say it was skybluepink?  Could I color skybluepink?  I can see it in my mind though.

I started thinking about how we see things and as I did I started putting colors with  my thoughts.  We have all heard someone say they are "feeling blue" or they are so sick they look "green"  Have you every seen a sad person look blue, or a sick person look green?  How did green get associated with sickness?  When I think if green I see rich beautiful grass, when I think of blue I do not think of it being a sad mood but a picture perfect sky with marshmallow clouds.

The more I thought, the more I saw colors.  I laugh at something really funny and I think yellow.  If I am sad I think gray, if I am feeling nostalgic I see pink, cold I see orange, tired I see black, excited I see red!  I have no idea why those colors are associated with those thoughts for me and may not be for others. 

I began thinking about the many different colors there are and being a crocheting fool right now I thought about the wool at it's natural state.  When spun it is all different yet when dyed it becomes one color, the strands are still themselves but blended into one.  You don't really know if you will get the color you want as you don't know how the fibers of the wool will take to the coloring and I thought of all the different strands of color there are.

As I imagined wool being spun and then dyed with a chosen color not knowing exactly what will come out I thought back to my mothers "skybluepink" to her it was a distinctive color that she associated with something that made her feel good.  It reminded me of James McBrides book The Color of Water, A Black mans Tribute  to his White Mother.  In this true story James knew his mother was different and when he often asked her why, she would say I am "light-skinned"  Later he wondered if he was different too and he asked his mom if he was black or white and she said "you're a human being, educate yourself or you'll be a nobody! and when James asked what color God was, she said "God is the color of water"

How many different colors do you see in a day?  Can you take an ordinary string from your life and turn it into something beautiful by adding color? 

Try being a rainbow knowing that the only thing you will find in the pot at the end is what you put into it!

Have a great Monday!