Dandelion

  Warm.  Inviting.  Promising.

Dandelion is the color after yoga, when the mind and body are calmed and stretched, and you just feel good.  When the laughter radiates inside your chest and the breath escapes in giggled clips and you just feel alive, you understand the meaning of living.  It's the gentle warmth of the place where you climb back into bed and pull the comforter over your shoulders and close your eyes.  It's waking up on a cold day, pulling the covers closer around you, and going back to sleep for a few hours.

It's the color of the feeling I get as his hand finds mine and our fingers lace together.  There's the warmth of his chest and the melody of his laughter that makes my heart heat in dandelion color and hope that he's here to stay for a while.

In the picture he took on Saturday, it's the color that shines from my smile, the pure happiness and the ease in which that smile came.  It's the warmth of having found someone who makes me feel like it's okay to take the chance because he's already caught my fall.

It's the color of Daydreamer by Adele and Lovely by Sara Haze.

When I wake in the morning, it's the smile I find on my phone in the form of "good morning," and nothing more.  It's the realization that I am beautiful as I look in the mirror, stop and really look, and see who I am.

But it's not just the feeling of a blossoming romance or the hints of warmth both mentally and physically.

There are the times when it's the friend you find new connections with.  So often we talk about the same things in different ways, mumbling through the favorites and the dislikes and the discussions about work and school and how both seem so trivial.  Rarely do we have the type of discussions that really bring us closer together, like pulling two threads tighter in a stitching to close the knot securely.  But when we do, when we relate on a more personal level than the mundane daily conversation allows us to do, we find ourselves warm in the friendship we have and smiling at the way they know us.  It's the color of that personal relation and the connecting threads we weave with one another.

The dandelion itself blooms in the warm color of summer, and fades into the soft gray of wishes.  We take that little plant between our fingers and release a breath of unspoken hopes, believing in the seeds to plant possibility and grow into the dreams we have imagined for ourselves.  It's promising, if only in our minds, but sometimes we just need that little seed of hope to keep a smile on our face.

Wild Blue Yonder

Soft.  Static.  Solitary.

This color reminds me of cotton, of the soft fluff of cotton balls and the simplistic natural beauty of a cotton plant.  It's devoid of much emotion because it simply just exists to serve something greater than itself, like the cotton being stretched and spun and made into cloth.  Even then it's not what we want it to be, so we drown it in the color of something else until it suits our liking.

It's the color of no words left to say.  Almost a parting, a farewell, based on the reasons that there simply aren't any words left to fill the gaps and the realization that that's okay.  It's the color of when you part ways mutually because they are choosing one path and I the other.

There doesn't need to be any great loss or incident that caused this type of separation.  Life takes its natural course, and we choose the directions in which we travel; we may begin on the same path as another, but because we are different individuals and not necessarily anything more, we choose different forks in the road or meander off at different intervals.  It's the distance caused by these twists and turns that bring us farther apart.  One path isn't right, and one path isn't wrong, they're just different, and later on we hopefully realize that we are on the path we want to be travelling.

It's the color of goodbye.

And yet... in the partings and farewells and changes of course, we find that it offers the comfort of something to return to.  In it we find the comfort of another waiting in their place, the shoulder they offer or their hand to tell you they're here for you and will wait patiently for you to heal.  

It's the familiar comfort of the sheets on your own bed where you can lie down at night and breathe a sigh of relief because it's sure to get better from here on out.  It's the whispers in your ear that tell you they will still be there in the morning.  It's the comfort of the background support that you haven't appreciated until the moment when you realize the center of your focus has shifted, and you are unfamiliar with the new view.  

It's the color of cotton, pulled and spun and woven into the shirt that pads your cheek against their chest.

It's the color of their sure, steady heartbeat that promises you're not alone.

Burnt Sienna

Warm.  Comfortable.  Routinely familiar.  

It's been a burnt sienna kind of day.  Laying in bed finishing up my thoughts for the day, finally warm under a thick comforter and extra quilt on top after the bitter cold of a winter Wednesday, and I'm feeling burnt sienna.

My baby, Stephano, sounds like burnt sienna.  Warm, solid, beautifully simplistic, complex under the surface, composed.  His wood has threads of the rich, reddish brown, and the color dances from the strings when I play him just right.

While burnt sienna might be just a brown and typically overlooked in the palette of things, it's homey and inviting and comfortable.  It's like the embrace of someone missed, or the warmth beside a fireplace when the snow is piling up outside.  And in it's simplicity, it's rich and flavorful and just right.

It's been Claire de Lune or Dies Irie.

It's these kinds of days that make life manageable sometimes.  There was nothing particularly notable; there was nothing rather exciting and yet nothing unfortunately depressing to dampen the natural harmony of things.  Life simply went on today, and that's okay.

I've been particularly aware of the comfort that good friends bring, their routine familiarity and the security to be found in that.  Like a small square of chocolate, there are the times that they offer just a small taste of their own warmth to brighten the flavor of my own day.  It's not that anything new or particularly interesting was said; a few laughs were shared, an I miss you, a shared commonality.  I think it's the little things like that, the little anomalies and the typically un-noted sentences, that bring us into our place in this moving world.  These people with their own stories and their own tracks to leave, touch us just enough, fill in a piece of our picture in just that right way, that make us feel secure in where we are or where we aren't.

It's the gentle reminder that today, everything is okay.  It's the knowledge that I am happy where I am in my life, content with the things I am facing and the ways I am changing.  It's the understanding that tomorrow might not be so easy, but that today is, and that's all that really matters for now.

Warm.  Comfortable.  Routinely familiar.

Claire de Lune by Debussy:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKd0VII-l3A     

Dies Irie by Ahn Trio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n40NyaUxmcY

Crayola Bombs and Cadet Blue

"Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination." ~ Robert Fulghum

Everyone knows the smell of a new box of crayons.  It brings back the memories of coloring books, Christmas morning stockings, refrigerators, and second grade.  Following the opening of that box saunter in the emotions, the excitement of a new school year, the pride of a piece of art, the hurt when they didn't know what it was we drew.  We can feel the thin paper wrapped wax stick without needing one in your hand, we can feel the smoothness of the tiny rod, and the wax bits under a fingernail after trying to scrape it off the paper.  We can hear the soft, easy tear of the paper, and the nearly inaudible scrape of the plastic sharpener.

We each have our favorites, from simple "Red" to the more exciting "Unmellow Yellow" and "Cerulean." There are the colors that make us relate, like "Lavender" and "Denim."  It's these colors, the hundreds of tones that bring the world around us to life, that paint the relationships we have with everyone and everything that we come in contact with.  These combinations of hues are the colors of our emotions, our relationships, our hopes and fears, our dreams, our selves.  They offer so much more than just pigment on paper.  They offer a place to return to, stability in an increasingly changing world, something to identify with when we feel lost, and an offer of comfort.