The Colors

My grandmother used to write to us in Florida from Michigan about “the colors.” Well, not to me. I hadn't yet come to be. But my father being the only child and my grandmother longing for a daughter and her grandchildren, she would write to my mother. This was when letters still carried meaning. My grandmother actually worked for the phone company so a conversation wouldn't have been out of the question. But she understood the power, the emotion of the written word. So she would write about nothing and everything.

She talked of church and work and all of life's happenings. But she always described the season.

Spring was beauty with tulips and blooms

Summer was joy with lakes and sun.

Oh but the fall...her favorite. Amber and crimson dance their way down from the north hand painting each leaf. Like fire moving across the branches turning white or black almost in reverence, stepping back so as not to distract from the performance. I wish I still had her letters to show you how she described each change. Each hue. So vivid.

Ive only ever dreamed of it.

I'm a mermaid brought up in the low lands, where sand and waves play.

But my father was born in the colors. October 7th. Maybe that's why she loved them so much. They were the backdrop to her greatest achievement.

Perhaps my heart quickens the same way because he is our connection. The colors connect me to the family I never knew.