I Am This Woman

My new favorite color is green. (No, I don’t mean Greenpeace or Sierra Club-green. Just the plain old color itself.)

Hunter. Kelly. Teal. Grass. Leaf. Wasabi. Fern. Olive. Kiwi. Aqua (is that close enough to green?). Pine. Kelp. Asparagus. Moss. Emerald. Aloe. Bamboo. Spring. All these colors, and even the names, set up a thrill in me.

Maybe it’s all the years of living in the desert with its red canyons, pink khaki sand, mica-speckled brown rocks, the merest sage fringe, green plants that are willing to dump leaves at any time due to insufficient water, and the intense sky of many blues. Yes, the sunsets are amazing, breathtaking. To the point where maybe I just couldn’t breathe out there anymore.

Green is the color of hope for me. Of nature, of trees, of things to come, of life, of living. Returning to Dallas for a hospice farewell in early March when things were still sleeping, and again in late March when the buds had emerged did something to me. Moving here in June – when all the trees were drinking in the heavy rains, the sunshine, when the great big chlorophyll party was in full swing – reminded me of how much I like plants, dirt, moisture. After I trimmed my magnolia tree, it shot up 10 feet from joy. I expect big blossoms next year.

In Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver’s biology teacher protagonist tells her students that plants do everything animals do: they grow, they reproduce, they eat, they excrete waste, they move, they die. I’ve never forgotten that.

In the desert, everything is hard, sharp, clear, well-lit and in focus. Here, the edges are softer, the greens myriad, the edges a bit more indeterminate, and life doesn’t hurt quite as much as it did out there. I’ll go back someday, probably to live if only for part of the year. It’s in my bones.

But the green life and black dirt of the forest, prairie and back yard are in my hair, my fingernails, my skin.  I bathe in the color – I knit with bottle green yarn, I wear new green sweaters, I cherish the little fake Christmas evergreen in my living room. Even now, in the brown, rust and drab of early winter outside, I dream of green and look for spring with a tender new awareness.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 8:49 pm and is filed under balance, color, creativity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.