Our Many-Colored Days (With a nod to Dr. Seuss)

Gray Day…./Everything is gray./I watch./But nothing moves today.

While this picture is charming and actually shows white snow, GRAY is the predominant color of a Glaswegian winter. Gray, and black, with speckles of grungy white, which is itself a shade of dingy gray. These are the colors of old snow, filthy sidewalks, and much of the wardrobe of this city. Lacking the blessing of light, most people revert to a spectrum they can actually see, which is black, white, and gray.

But when my days/Are Happy Pink/It’s great to jump/ And just not think.

It’s enough to drive a body ’round the twist. We LOVE color. We adore color. We buy strange shades of bedding (it’s what goes on sale first – people like “normal” colors, so we take the weird ones) and drench our sheets in dye color. T., when doing dye loads, usually tosses in some t-shirts and underclothes for a little livening. It’s hard to be unhappy wearing green tie-dyed underpants. At the very least, it’s hard to not feel the urge to wear neon shades, the more blacks and gray people wear.

On Bright Red Days/ how good it feels/to be a horse/and kick my heels!

Of course, sometimes even our color cheerleading fails. This winter has so far been filled with emotional upsets — we’ve grieved through classmates’ suicides, cancers, car crash fatalities, and seen the marriages of two very dear friends begin to dissolve. Sometimes, it all seems a bit much, and the dank winter gray seeps in. We had to fall down for awhile last week, and just lay where we’d landed. Sometimes… sometimes, acknowledging the ick just seems to be a necessity.

However, even in the midst of our grim days, we are inadvertently adding color to our internal landscapes, at least — without much effort or conscious thought. In the quest to be healthy, we are eating really colorful foods.

Green Days/Deep deep in the sea./Cool and quiet fish/That’s me.

Red lentil curry with chunks of “chicken,” chopped ginger, fragrant coconut milk, and a fiery array of jalapeño chiles. It’s lovely and bright and D. served it in his small bread boules. Tasty. Wilted greens, steamed broccoli, carrot discs and bright red bell pepper confetti brightened a bed of rice noodles and spicy “beef” strips.

Then comes a Yellow Day and Wheeee! I am a busy, buzzy bee.

In honor of our color quest, T. whipped up another batch of sugar cookies to pass along (and eat herself) and colored the glaze with saffron and boiling water. Beautifully golden fish with silver eyes — and the last sugar cookies she’ll be making for some time, for though she thought she hated sugar cookies, she has modified an already excellent recipe and now these things are Becoming A Problem. But never mind – they’re colorful and bright and pretty, and the perfect thing to pass to friends to liven up their gray days.

Especially to those of you who are also stumbling a bit in your walk through the world: May an epiphany of color and light brighten your days; may you find light in the dark, and joy in the common, every day things.

Dr. Seuss wrote My Many Colored Days in 1973 and it was published posthumously in 1996. He wasn’t finished with it yet, so you can see it lacks his usual talent, but it was nice to get one more book of his anyway.