Color Theory

My favorite color is blue, or rather, the plural, blues. The blues of robins eggs all in a nest. It’s taken many years to admit this, to freely declare: I am blue.

My grandma’s favorite color was pink, and this made sense to me when I was small and looking for her belt loops to hold on to, balancing on the step stool while helping her stir the cookie dough with a wooden spoon. She looked out her kitchen window at the tulips and petunias. I grunted, stirring. She spent time lost in her mind before smiling, “Pink. Pink is my favorite.”

As I grew older, I was surprised (or steeping in first-rinse cynicism) that pink could be a grandma’s favorite. Pink is young. Pink is baby dolls and the color of so many dresses I tore holes in the hems of from running too fast on pavement and falling. “Why do you always run in your dresses,” my mom would ask, exasperated. Because I am not pink, I would think.

When I turned eighteen, I declared yellow was my favorite, because yellow was clever. Yellow was that arrogant combination of intellect and confidence and the intent to conquer the world with poetically rendered words and quietly rendered music. But I wasn’t yellow. Yellow was the sky awash in a blinding sun and devoid of clouds. I grew up and knew: Behind the yellow there was blue.

But that favoritism came later.