Life In Color

She just gets angry, when she talks about it. She tries to explain and seems to think that if she just uses different words, we'll suddenly understand, that we'll see. She'll grab two pieces of clothing from the laundry line and say, "Look! One dark, one light! See how they're different? But imagine, imagine that there is so much more than just shades of light and dark! Blue, green, red, yellow! Neons, pastels, jewel tones, earth tones! COLOR!" In these moments she sounds almost manic. She searches our faces in desperation, waiting for some kind of understanding to dawn. But it never does.

What can we do? We listen dutifully to our grandmother, but no lecture of hers has ever brought us any closer to understanding the mystery of color. And she knows it. Her rant ends the same way it always does. Deflated, she turns back to her work, muttering words of frustration, and us children wander back off to our play or chores.

She loves us, but sometimes I catch my grandmother watching my siblings and I with narrowed eyes. We squeal with laughter as we catch frogs at the pond or pick and eat fat blackberries, dark juice smearing our faces and staining our hands. She doesn't smile fondly at us as our mother does, but watches us with a bitterness I can't understand. She possesses an underlying impatience towards the world. Or perhaps it's just with those of us that don't seem to mind the world as it is.

Mother tells us to be patient, to listen. She says that grandmother has never been able to accept this changed, colorless world. My parents remember color too, but vaguely. They were young when it happened, The Color Draining. Father always says that The Color Draining makes no sense as a title for what happened. Scientists say that the world didn't lose it's color, we just lost the ability to see it. They say there's some chemical in the air that caused it, that it did something to our eyes. How exactly this chemical was introduced into our air is something that no one can quite seem to agree on.

Grandmother is full of wild theories on what (or who) caused color to leave us. She reads every bit of research on the topic, along with every conspiracy theory. I think she just wants someone to blame. I guess I can understand that.

I wish we could still see color too, not so much for myself, but for my grandmother and those like her. The ones that can't seem to find their happy in a colorless world.

One hot day in July my father decides we need a beach day. Although the coast is just a few hours drive from our country home, a trip to the beach is a rare treat. Wild with excitement, my siblings and I pile into our family car. We exchange surprised glances as we see my mother helping my grandmother into the front seat. I can't remember the last time she's joined us at the beach. She always says she, "can't stand that dull gray horizon" not when she remembers the blues that should be there.

Blue skies. It's something I've heard my grandmother talk about countless times. As the car starts down our dirt and gravel driveway, I try to wrap my mind around the idea: blue skies. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to make myself see a blue sky in my mind's eye. Impossible when all I know about "blue" is that it's something I've never seen. Still, sometimes I fantasize that my mind's eye will show me color, that I'll dream in color. But it's no use. All I can see in my imagination is the sky I've always known. I shrug off the disappointment, which grows less and less with each of these failed experiments. Instead of day dreaming, I join in the guessing game that my family is playing.

"Does it eat meat?" my youngest sister asks.

"Does it have fur?"

"Stripes?"

"Tiger!" several of us guess at once.

"Orange and black," I hear my grandmother mutter from the front, "A tiger is orange and white and black."

But we didn't need to know that, to know that the answer was "tiger," did we?

Hours later, after several of us have fallen asleep in the too warm backseat, we crest a hill and someone shouts, "I see it!"

Sitting up, I too see the ocean, sunlight glinting sharply off the water. A perfect day for the beach.

As soon as the car stops, we children pile out of the back with our shovels and pails and sprint down the hill, throwing off our shoes as soon as we hit sand. The sand feels wonderful beneath my toes and I take a moment to work my feet down into the soft grains, stopping once they're completely hidden. I pause only a moment to savor the feeling, then it's back to racing towards the water.

We're already splashing in the waves by the time the adults reach the beach. My parents help my grandmother navigate her way to a large log where she gingerly sits down. I wonder that she can look so sour on a day like this.

After we've grown cold from the water, my siblings and I make our way to the log where the adults have made camp. We do our best to brush the sand from our hands before digging into our sandwiches. After lunch, it's on to sand castle making and shell finding.

Sometime later, as we help my father dig a moat around our castle, I look up and see my grandmother watching us. She hasn't moved from her place on the log.

I am suddenly filled with a determination to make my grandmother enjoy the beach today. I nudge my closest sister and point to grandmother. My sister looks longingly at the half finished moat, but nods and stands. We'll leave the moat to the others. I pick up my pail, heavy with the shells and smooth stones that we've collected and we walk toward my grandmother. When we reach her, we sit at her feet.

"Grandmother," I say, "Don't you want to feel the sand? It's one of the best parts!"

She shrugs. "Can we take off your shoes?" I ask. She shrugs again.

We gently tug off her shoes and her socks. Grandmother inches forward slightly on her log bench, and gently moves her feet back and forth in the sand.

"Let's bury them!" my sister says. And so we do, giggling as we pile sand on my grandmother's worn feet. She wiggles her toes, causing the sand to cascade off of them. We try to bury them faster, but again she wiggles her toes, undoing our work. We giggle and when I look up at her, I see a hint of a smile on her face.

"Do you want to see our shells?" we ask. She nods and we move to sit on either side of her.

We dig through the pail, finding our favorites and passing them to her for inspection.

"Feel how smooth this one is!"

"This one is all ridged!"

"What do you think this is? Coral? Feel it, it's weird!"

"Hold this big shell to your ear, can you hear the ocean?"

She patiently takes each of our precious finds in her hands, murmuring acquiescence at our comments and praise for each treasure.

We sit quietly for a moment, watching the others finish the sand castle. I take a deep breath in, "I like the way the ocean smells," I say. "You know that ocean smell?"

Grandmother nods, "I've always liked that smell too."

One of my older brothers runs towards us shouting, "Father says it's nearly time to go! Let's get in the waves again!"

My sister and I jump up, ready to race after him, but my grandmother says, "Wait, I'll come with you."

Surprised, but happy, we wait as my brother (the tallest of us), offers my grandmother his arm. My parents watch us from where they stand, knee deep in the water, my other siblings splashing around them.

Slowly, the four of us make our way to the water's edge. My grandmother gingerly steps close enough for a wave to lick her toes. We watch her face, wondering when the all too familiar bitterness will cloud her expression.

"Go on and play," she says, "I'm alright."

We rush out into the waves, jumping over them and into them and not minding the iciness of the water one bit.

Eventually, I stop jumping and stand still. I close my eyes for a moment. I listen to the washes crashing around me, feel the warm sun on my face.

It's perfect, a perfect day. Although Grandmother would surely disagree with me, nothing is perfect in her mind. Not now. The thought makes me open my eyes, I feel desperately curious to see my grandmother's face.

I rush back through the waves to where she stands. I stand beside her and she holds out her hand to me. I take it, the skin wrinkled and rough, but comfortingly familiar.

I examine her face, and for once, there is no trace of bitterness. No scorn.

"It's taken me so long..." she whispers.

"So long to what?" I ask.

"So long to accept that life doesn't have to be experienced in color," she says, "to be beautiful."