Colors, light the corner of my mind...

Let's share our color stories - a creative writing prompt series - beginning with RED

Colors, light the corners of my mind…

It would be about a week or so until I knew it was time to reorganize my box of 64 Crayola crayons after heavy use in my beloved coloring books. I didn’t mind putting them back in the incorrect color order while using them because I knew how much I looked forward to that job; a job taken very seriously for a six-year-old color-crazy girl. I’d dump and spread them all out on my bed, giving extra love to ‘cornflower’, ‘periwinkle’, and ‘blue-green’, and thoughtfully put them in perfect color order, side by side, pinks after reds, and behind the indigos I stacked the black, browns, silver, and white. A rainbow was always the goal and as I ran into the challenge of needing to break the rainbow-order, because moving to the next elevated cardboard-supported row was required, my problem-solving skills kicked in and I learned to spread the rainbow across all three elevated rows until all 64 crayons satisfied my goal: an undisturbed rainbow.

Color, and its association with beauty and preference, has always been an important part of how we process the world around us. Similarly to scent, color has a way of taking us to places and times, tapping into that part of our brain where memories are stored.

Think of a color and close your eyes. What came to mind?

Now, allow yourself time to explore the depths of your memory - what can you first remember about that color? and then what? Jot down anything that comes to mind; don’t leave anything out. Hiding in these color-fueled memories are stories. Once you have your list, which items jump out to you as holding a story waiting to be told? Take some time and write these stories out. Your color stories can be a few sentences or a few paragraphs, whatever you need to satisfy that color memory.

In the middle of working on this prompt, I discovered it was easy to trigger other color memories by paying more attention to color in general. I saw a friend post a photo of peonies on her Instagram and instantly I thought of the pink peonies we had lining our back porch that were always filled with tiny ants. A certain shade of tan I saw brought visions of the three-piece men’s suits of the 1980’s worn by the dressy, nice old men at our church who always greeted us and came up to talk to Mamaw and Papaw. Thoughts of Papaw at church made me think of his Pomade-greased back jet-black hair.

Go ahead and follow the rabbit trail of color memory and be delighted where it takes you.

I shared a couple of my stories with my husband and color memories started coming to light in the corners of his mind (this totally 80’s Barbara Streisand song reference felt like the perfect match for this nostalgic post). So, what’s more fun than capturing some of these delightful stories? Sharing them, of course.

Begin exploring and capturing your stories and I’ll post one color starting in this post, below. Share your favorite color story in the comments. Or if you write your stories in your favorite writing space (on your blog, Substack, Instagram, or website), be sure to tag me and/or make a comment here on my Substack so others know to head to your story wherever you’ve posted it.

I’m excited for you because I know how much joy this little process has given me in recalling objects and moments from my childhood that I haven’t thought about in ages – like my talking Cricket doll, with the large blue (creepy) eyes that moved from left to right and the way a single grape hyacinth flower took me to a place in my imagination that I had never been to before but just knew it was where I was supposed to live or be from, in another life.

Let’s get started with RED!

Happy treasure hunting.

“Never wear a red t-shirt to Target. I enjoy helping people, but not every two minutes.”

- Kevin Nealon

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Me on my new Strawberry Shortcake big wheel that Santa brought for Christmas that year. It showed up in my stream of conscious RED list, but didn’t make it to a story.

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Let’s Share Our Color Stories - RED

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I’ll begin by sharing my stream of conscious memory recall list. Feel free to share your list instead of your story, or both; whatever you’d like to share is welcome!

My strawberry shortcake doll, The “strawberry” birthmark I hated on my body, I hated mustard but loved ketchup, Chicago Bulls boxers and photo in front of Dipper’s red sports car, Mamoo’s red lips with lipstick, the stool I played with in my bedroom that had strawberries hand painted on it, how my face blushed when Ryan found the lyrics I’d written out to Pearl Jam’s Black on a piece of paper and he didn’t know they were lyrics, how red my face would get playing basketball, the red wrapping paper that Aunt Brenda rewrapped after hiring me to wrap her gifts, the sea of red wrapped presents that would spill all the way out into the middle of the living room at Mamaw and Papaw’s house on Christmas morning, the red and green Santa latch hook rug wall hanging, our upright red piano in the basement at Chamberlain Lane with all the framed photos on top of it, Mamaw’s rose bushes on Fisher Avenue, my friend Stephanie’s red-orange hair and freckles, the red and green strawberry shortcake big wheels I got for Christmas one year, the big red and white striped buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken that we’d eat at church picnics, the bright red cherries that mom would put in our lemonade and I couldn’t wait to find them at the bottom of our glasses, how horrified I was when I saw that scene in Carrie, our shag carpet in the basement, the red viewmaster toy we had, Michael Jackson’s red jacket in the music video, Thriller, Ryan’s Michael Jordan poster, the shade of Mama Mary’s hair that was red-burgundy…

“I love bright red drinks, don’t you? They taste twice as good as any other color.”

- Lucy Maud Montgomery

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The Red Stories

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I. And That’s a Wrap

I was 15 the first Christmas I wanted to make my own money to purchase Christmas presents for my family. I decided to make myself available “for hire”, hoping to earn a few extra bucks for any Christmas help baking, decorating, or shopping that I could extend within my family. One afternoon very close to Christmas day, we were over at Aunt Brenda’s house and she asked me to follow her down to the basement because she had a few gifts she wanted me to wrap. She was going to pay me!

I would have been more excited but Brenda’s wrapped presents were always the closest thing I knew to perfect, with crisp, creased corners, perfectly symmetrical and plumped hand-made bows from ribbon, and the Scotch tape so hidden, you’d think her gifts were wrapped with glue. Every year when she’d bring all of her gifts to Mamaw and Papaw’s house on Christmas day, hers stood out the most because they were all the same - wrapped in bright red, glossy, super-thick wrapping paper, finished with a bow made of thick white ribbon. I had always felt a little guilty ripping the paper on her gifts because it felt so luxurious.

Descending down the basement steps, I caught a glimpse of the tower of white cardboard clothing boxes, precariously leaning and stacked nearly to the ceiling. I looked at my Swatch watch, 6:00 pm. I knew this was going to take some time. But first, I had to take the bow-making lesson. I could tell she was frustrated that my best effort couldn’t even touch her worst but I truly tried to make them as beautiful as I could; she was just pro. Also, our family had never used paper this thick to wrap our gifts and creasing at the edges was a new technique for me that I still hadn’t mastered by the end of the night. Nevertheless, all night, I chugged along in that stuffy, windowless basement, under the small stream of light shining down from an exposed light bulb in the ceiling with a dangling chain. Aunt Brenda never came down to check on me and it was 11:15 pm when I finally finished wrapping the last gift and tying the last bow. I walked upstairs, exhausted, yet proud. Sprawled across her living room sofa watching TV in her nightgown, she sleepily handed me folded-up cash that didn’t feel thick enough to cover the scope of the job I had completed. I was secretly glad she didn’t check my work.

A few days later was Christmas. Our family - the aunts, uncles, cousins and all of our dogs - always brought all of our gifts over to Mamaw and Papaw’s house after spending the morning with our own families and Santa’s gifts. Their living room became instantly covered and smothered in gifts, extending several yards out from the Christmas tree. The kids always helped everyone bring their gifts inside from the cars and we’d put them under the tree. When Uncle Bob and Aunt Brenda arrived, my brother and I met them at the trunk of their car to grab the bags of presents. When she popped the trunk open, I noticed that all of the presents I had wrapped and made bows for had been rewrapped and rebowed, without a smidgen of Scotch tape to be seen. I was stunned, a little embarrassed, and didn’t know what to do. Aunt Brenda didn’t say anything to me at all about it that day, or ever. So, neither did I, until many years later.

Before Brenda passed away many years later, she had requested that I read a poem and speak at her funeral. I was surprised, but when I wrote about what I loved most about my Aunt Brenda, it was her spirit of excellence when it came to all things - family, tradition, hosting occasions, setting a table, and wrapping Christmas presents.

II. Da Bulls

It was 1994 and if you were a young boy or teen, you were obsessed with Michael Jordan. If you were a young sister of a young boy or teen, you were, too. In a phase where anything my older brother thought was cool, I, too, wanted to be like Mike. While shopping one afternoon, I convinced my mom to buy me a pair of red Chicago Bulls men’s boxer shorts, promising I wouldn’t wear them out in public. That was sort of true. I didn’t wear them to school but I loved rocking them around the house and on weekends with a red t-shirt. Anyway, they were too cool for school.

One afternoon, my friend Katherine was at my house and we were having fun with a disposable camera. We were both wearing matching outfits: a red t-shirt and red Chicago Bulls boxer shorts. Our yard had a small basketball court and my brother and the neighborhood boys had ruined the hoop from dunking too many times, leaving it in a slumped-down position. If you stood in front of the hoop just right, grabbing the net with one hand and dropping the ball in with the other, while one leg was kicked back, up in the air and the other leg was supported by your tippy toes, someone could take a photo of that pose and you’d look exactly like Air Jordan. OK, actually nothing like Air Jordan, but we certainly believed we looked like we were dunking the ball in mid-air. Timing the shot with the ball dropping through the net while our leg was up took up a lot of film but it was worth it for the shot!

Luckily, the camera had a few shots left because my neighbor’s red sports car was in the driveway that day. And since Katherine and I were already capturing our coolness in photographs, we knew this was a perfect photo opp to look like red sports car driving athletes. We took turns leaning against the car, cooly holding the ball at our hips like basketball players do and smiling at the camera, in our Chicago Bulls boxers and red t-shirts. A picture doesn’t lie and when these pictures were printed, we could see how uneasy, nervous, and forcefully fake-smiling we looked, worried about getting caught leaning on Danny’s red sports car.

III. I Watched Them Shag

(Keeping this one shorter)

In our basement, in the house on Chamberlain Lane, we had a 1970’s deep red shag carpet. It was fairly unremarkable but one of my absolute favorite memories of all time happened on that carpet repeatedly: watching Mom and Dad shag dance to beach music. They’d turn the music on from the music player mounted on the wall - “39 - 21 - 46” by The Showmen was my favorite; they’d take each other’s hands and that’s when the magic began. It was a treasure to watch them like this. When my parents were dancing, I knew everything was alright in the world. They were carefree and smiling, in rhythm and in step with one another, and they also looked pretty good doing it. Dad liked to sing along to the music, but when he wasn’t, his tongue would stick out, which I knew to mean he was concentrating on the moves. Most of the time, I felt like adult-things kept Mom and Dad busy and life was pretty serious in the adult-things world. But not when I was watching them shag dance on that red shag carpet.

“Their lips were four red roses on a stalk.”

- William Shakespeare

I can’t wait to hear your red stories!

Please feel free to share this post with a friend! And if you’ve never done anything like this, please give yourself this gift and take a stab at it. I promise you will find some delight in the process! You don’t have to be a writer or poet or even a wordsmith. If you like color and have memories, you belong here.