The Blues

My favorite colors are blues--evocative of water and sky, my children's eyes, my daddy's eyes, Jackson's and Marcus' eyes.  When my brown-eyed mother was thirteen, she spied her sweetheart, a sixteen-year-old boy who walked from the back of the church to the front (where she was sitting, no accident) to turn down the lights.  One look at that blue-eyed handsome man and she was a goner, she says.

It was wartime.  He went to the Navy, she went to college, but seventy-two years ago this month, September 16th, they eloped.  She was twenty; her Navy man was back and ready to go to the University of Georgia.

His favorite color was blue, too.  Twenty years ago, they bought me a white house that was, frankly, ugly, a squatty little concrete block house, no stucco.  Inside, the walls were painted badly, colors from the walls bleeding into the ceilings, an avocado and orange kitchen, and ratty old carpets. It was exactly the house I wanted, in a safe old neighborhood.  I'd love for him to see it now, wrapped inside and out in blues and turquoise.

I wanted a project, and this one has given me many over the years.  Thanks to a surprise check this spring (with a letter signed Lloyd and Carlene), this latest iteration has been an ongoing and full-time project since May.  I'm so happy in my blues!