This was my childhood
paintbrush. When all I saw were the
colors black and white. There was
good....there was bad, hot and cold, up and down. I had not yet learned the different shades of
black or the infinite boredom of only white.
I believed what I was told by everyone because I had not yet learned
that there were things such as lies, betrayal....lukewarm feelings. The revelation of those things caused me to
learn to paint sometimes with gray....neutral...non-threatening....easy because
it blended with everything and offended nothing.
As a grew a little older
my paintbrush was heavy with the colors of the rainbow and all the shades in
between. I learned to look for nuances
in shade and tonality and I began to see people as colors. Some people were vivid....vibrant. Others were plain and pale and
uninteresting. I wanted to be all the
colors....but more than any I wanted to be a bright, happy, and sunshiny
yellow. While my childhood was often
turbulent, it was full of events that sometimes made me have to step out from
the comfortable places and face things.
Sometimes I faced them with my rainbow paint brush, making things seem
better than they were. And, sometimes, I reverted to unassuming, non-confrontational gray.
As time passed I found
myself defined by other colors....like maroon and white which represented my
school, my friends, and my safe haven in times of trouble because more than
occasionally I found areas of my life were very black. During these times....I found myself longing
for the grey days when I could simply blend with little expected of me. But, for me, gray was cowardly, so, I threw
myself into maroon and white with like minded people and spent several years
hiding out in the colors of my cheer uniform.
I became older....terribly
old at 18....and I married. Often my
paint brush during this time was bright red....blood red....angry, angry red.
But my babies came along and the purity of the
love I had for them turned my paint brush a soft pink. This became my favorite brush and I tried to
make it last as long as I could, but sometimes the other colors leaked in and I
found that each time they did, my pretty soft pink brush just didn't paint
quite as nicely as before.
I've often had a passing
romance with a blue brush when tears fell like rain and mixed with every other
color making a confusion of patterns.
I've even painted with a green brush from time to time....envious of
other people and other things....things that seemed easier and more pleasant
than what my own reality had become.
I've dabbled in dirty brown paint that was hard to clean off and I've often been a ridiculous shade of purple - so angry I boiled.
I've come to know that
each color I've painted with for a season represented what kind of person I was
at the time. Even when I revisited
certain colors their vibrance was a little different, sometimes
softer....sometimes bordering on a disturbing neon version.
I'm different today. I paint a lot in red....not because I'm angry
anymore, but because I like it....it is strong and can stand up to other
colors. I also paint in yellow now more
than ever...because I've found I can be happy with myself even when others are
not. I am the only one who knows my
heart. I still have moments when blue
and green come calling but I'm happy to say that brown and black are nearly a
thing of the past. I don't have time for
them....my life left is short and I don't want dirty or hurtful things to color
any of my days. I learned to use gray again, because it is in my gray areas that I find my
tolerance for others who may not think as I do or agree with me. The tolerance for differences and the
tolerance that helps me understand that someone may be having their season with
a particular paint brush and they just need to paint it out till it is
finished.
I am so very different
than I was at 14, 18, 25, 40....50. In
fact, probably my biggest transformation has come in the last 5 or 6
years. Life dealt me an exhausting and
heart wrenching blow that changed me forever.
I struggled to find anything that remotely could represent that time
frame for me and all I can think of was that I was painting for a while in
transparency.
My feelings were out
there, raw like an open wound but most of the time I felt almost
invisible. With the exception of a very
few people, I don't think anyone was aware of the magnitude of my isolation. Losing your mother as an only child of hers
with no one to share that pain....that ripping hurt and then having to nearly
single handedly spend years putting her life and her things away was
demoralizing and sometimes dehumanizing.
I was a living ghost going
through the motions of life, trying to hold together my own fragile
person. On the day I shredded the final
piece of paper of all the records mom had kept for decades was the day I begin
to feel a lightening in my spirit. As
the last tax return (from 1962) slid through the shredder with staple intact it
seemed to pull my anger, pain and disappointment with it.
It didn't happen quickly
or easily but finally, all the things that seemed so important and all the
issues I felt so strongly about sort of faded into softer shades of themselves
and I gathered them in to my colorful life and tried to make sure they remained
part of my palette but that none of them would ever dominate the picture again.
I have strong feelings....even
stronger opinions but I have learned a tolerance for things I never thought I
would. It is not that I agree with them,
but I have realized that I can only paint my picture with the colors God has
provided me with and allow others to do the same.
More than anything else,
I've realized that I am strong and if I were not me I think I would like the
person I am today. The bristles on my
brush are more than a little worn and there is evidence of all the past colors
used and cleaned and used again, but more and more I find myself picking up the
happy colors. I have days. Days when I go black, dark and dirty.....I
hope that is natural. I think what is
important is to learn to not live in the dark and dismal side of life. To always be seeking the light and happy moments that make things better for
ourselves and maybe eventually for others...particularly those who might have
gotten splashed with some of our more unattractive colors when we weren't being very careful with our life...our words.
Peace my friends....pray
for each other....those you know and those you don't. Pray for our county and the people in
authority over us. Pray for me that I
will one day lose all my brushes but the happy ones.
