My first favorite color was pink.
Then when I moved from Iowa, it was purple, because my best friend in Iowa, who shared my name, her favorite color was purple.
Then it was a beautiful forest green.
Or maybe the grey of a rolling mist. The colors in and around my grandmother’s lake house in northern Ontario.
That mist was so beautiful. It was so thick and in the mornings would just sit on the ground, like a sea of smoke, heavy with moisture, the kind you could taste in the air.
At some point I lost a favorite color. I don’t have one anymore.
My mother’s favorite color was always blue.
My husband’s favorite is red.
My brother’s favorite was blue.
I don’t remember my sister having a favorite. If she did, and I’ve forgotten, I’m sorry.
But this is the story of my Father, who also did not have a favorite color. And I should tell the story now, because I am 38 years old at the time of this telling, and he was 38 years old at the time this story happened, more or less. I couldn’t have been more than 3 or so.
I don’t remember the exact words of the conversation – it is in fragments – but I remember some. And I know myself and my father – I know how it would have gone.
I asked Daddy what is your favorite color?
He said he didn’t have one.
I would’ve said why because I asked why to absolutely everything. I was a child before the Internet. God bless my father’s patience.
He likely said he liked all the colors, or couldn’t choose just one, or some answer he thought would satisfy me.
But me being me, I wasn’t. I thought everyone should have a favorite color.
This part I remember. I told my father if he couldn’t pick, that I would choose for him. And that his favorite color should be yellow, because it was so bright and happy like him.
I know now, how difficult a time that was for him and my sister.
And how beautiful she looks in the color yellow. We never really knew each other.
Maybe if I hadn’t been born, maybe my father would’ve been less distracted. Maybe if I hadn’t been born, she wouldn’t have had a stepmother. My mother could’ve gone to the Olympics again. Could have won this time.
How my father’s bright blue eyes will always reflect back out of my brother’s eyes. The brother I spent a year praying to God for, every night.
How I can’t do this right now.
But maybe someday, someday we will find our way back. The three of us.
Because there is work yet to do.
Lost children yet to save.
Tired fathers to help.
Parents who speak but do not communicate.
And ourselves. We must find our own peace first.
And maybe then I will have a favorite color.
Laughs and Lobotomies 