Seeing Orange

There I was, wondering what I was going to write about this week, when yet another person mentioned that she had put meal worms in her bird feeder, and now she had bluebirds coming to her backyard on a regular basis.

In Maine.

In January.

Friends, I did not know that sort of thing was allowed.

Oh, I knew you could put meal worms in your bird feeders any old time. I just didn’t know bluebirds were allowed across the border in the wintertime. I assumed there was some sort of warm-weather bird patrol ushering the bluebirds back to a more hospitable area.

“No! Go back! It’s too early! It’s too cold!” the patrol birds would call out in warning. Then they would flap their wings and turn the bluebirds around and shoo them all back south.

But it turns out I was wrong.

Even the Audubon Society says I am wrong. Apparently, as more suburbs are built in Maine, additional bluebird habitat opens up at the edges of forested areas. And then, of course, there is climate change, which not only warms things up (at least here, at least for now), but also confuses everyone. As a result, the bluebirds are expanding their winter range into southern Maine. Bluebirds in Maine's Winter - Maine Audubon

I am wrong about a lot of things. Thinking about bluebirds brought up a slew of memories to point that out for my benefit. Especially memories of the color orange. There is nothing like a gentleman bluebird in his stylish blue jacket and jaunty, contrasting orange vest to point out just how wrong I have been about orange for a large sector of my life.

This might be the moment to mention I see colors differently from the way a lot of other people see them. Just ask me what color my house is. Then ask my spouse and my son the same question. You will get two different answers — my answer and their answer. Based on the firm belief that I am right and they are wrong (because, duh!), I have conducted my own informal survey. Most people agree with my spouse and son.

You might look at Mr. Bluebird and say, “That is not an orange vest.” You might call it rust, or peach, or salmon, and Tahitian sunset, or… Pardon me while I go visit the paint store to come up with another fancy name. Humor me here. For the purposes of this post, Mr. Bluebird’s vest is orange, okay?

When I was young, and even right up until middle age, I disliked orange. You might even say I disliked it with a passion. I disliked it even though some pretty wonderful things are actually orange. Things like pumpkins and carrots and some flowers and fall foliage and some hues of sunsets and sunrises. And oranges.

No matter how many good things came in orange, when I was little, the blue, green, red, and purple crayons in my Crayola crayon box were quickly worn down to nubs. The poor orange crayon languished, waiting a chance for glory that never arrived.

Cracks in my armor against orange began to develop early on. One day in junior high school, one of my classmates wore a new dress she had made. I remember staring at that dress in math class, when I was supposed to be paying attention to Mr. Cannally. The dress was a simple navy-blue shift. But my classmate had made the bodice and a strip at the hem out of bright orange. Not salmon. Not peach. Not Tahitian sunset. But bright orange. I didn’t know you could put bright orange and navy-blue together in the same dress. I was transfixed.

I brought my fascination with that color combination to Miss Morrison, my home economics teacher. This was back in the old days, when the gender binary was in full effect, and girls were required to take home economics and boys were required to take shop in junior high school.

What if I made something that was navy blue and orange, I wondered aloud to Miss Morrison. Big mistake.

Miss Morrison disliked me. At the very least, she appeared to consider me a thorn in her side. That was puzzling, because I was a well-behaved child, who tried to do the right things. The best I can figure is that I came from a family where my highly gifted mother did not possess great skills in what in those days would have been called the “domestic arts.” Whereas my mother was an excellent writer, and she was the person everyone turned to for a listening ear, she was a terrible cook. And sewing? She didn’t even bother, having given up after being an abject failure at it during her own required home economics training. You would have cried on my mother’s shoulder if your marriage were breaking up. If you needed someone to write a play, a poem, or lyrics to a song, she would have been your go-to. She would have assisted you in composing or editing that all-important communique. She was lovely. You just would not have wanted her hemming your pants. I think Miss Morrison sniffed out that weakness in my gene pool, and she didn’t like it one little bit.

My family didn’t own a sewing machine, which really set me back. My only opportunity to finish my sewing project was during the twice-a-week, 45-minute home economics class over which Miss Morrison presided. Whereas most of the other girls would show up having made progress on their dresses since the previous class, my own project would be the same sorry mess, not having advanced one iota in the intervening interval. The pressure was on, too, because at the end of the term we all had to participate in the dreaded “fashion show” at which we were required to model our creations in front of the whole school and our families. Seriously. (Whoever was in charge of humiliation at my junior high school was very good at it.)

Let’s just say I was not Miss Morrison’s star pupil.

So, I shyly approached Miss Morrison with the idea of somehow combining navy blue and orange in the same project. She looked at me as though I had two heads. “Navy blue and orange? They don’t go together!” she snapped. End of discussion. I slunk back to my seat to remove the stitches from whatever botched seam or dart I was trying to fix. As for orange, once again I relegated it to “bad color” status in my mind.

Entire summers flew by without my noticing that many of my beloved nasturtiums were actually orange. I carved a lot of pumpkins without admiring their lovely orange color. I marveled at Baltimore orioles singing in my yard without attributing their beauty to, well, orange. And every fall, I gave thanks for the fall foliage that graced our trees without paying tribute to the leading role orange played in the pageant of colors. Why? Because orange.

Fast forward a lot, lot, lot of years, and I had a little boy. We had just remodeled part of our house — specifically the part of our house that included our bedrooms. In place of the crumbling old horsehair plaster walls and rattling, drafty windows, we had installed new, insulated walls and new thermo-pane windows. When the time came to paint, my spouse insisted on white walls, but we allowed our 3-year-old son to choose the color for the baseboards and the trim around the windows and door in his bedroom.

You know where this is going.

“I want orange,” he said.

Not salmon, not peach, and not Tahitian sunset. He wanted bright, bright orange. He even pointed to the orange paint chip on the color chart. And I mean the brightest possible orange paint chip on the color chart.

“How about red?” we asked. “Or yellow?”

“I want orange,” he replied.

When the painter put on the first coat of paint, he approached us and said, “You know, I could mix in a little bit of white to tone it down.”

“No,” we said. “The kid wants orange.”

I headed off to the fabric store, where I found some cloth depicting brown rabbits harvesting orange carrots from their lovely green gardens. I made curtains out of the fabric. (See, Miss Morrison? I wasn’t the deadbeat you made me out to be.) (Also, I had a sewing machine by then.) I suppose those curtains offset the bright orange trim a bit. But, if you want to know the truth, I actually loved that bright orange color. It was cheerful, warm, and sunny, especially in wintertime. My heart was breaking open, and I was allowing myself to like something I had for so long believed I intensely disliked.

Six years ago, that same son, now all grown up, was asked to be an attendant in a treasured friend’s wedding. All the wedding attendants were asked to dress in colors of the rainbow. The wedding couple told the attendants they could wear whatever they wanted as long as it featured their assigned color. Somehow our son missed the teleconference at which everyone chose the color they wanted to wear. By default, he ended up with, you guessed it: orange.

My son asked for my assistance. Recognizing my limitations, I helped him find someone who knew what they were doing. She helped him execute his plan, which was to make an orange vest to wear over a dark blue dress shirt. Oh my, when I heard that, you can guess what I also heard: the ghost of Miss Morrison roaring back in my head!

“But, can you put orange and blue together?” I asked a bit nervously.

Our expert shrugged. “Well, they are opposite each other on the color wheel. So, yeah.”

No big deal. End of discussion. And goodbye to the voices of small-minded teachers!

I love what my son and his open-minded helper came up with. See for yourself. I especially like the rainbow cat tie, chosen from a few options our son presented to the bride. It really sets the whole ensemble off.

You see all the memories a chance remark about bluebirds elicited for me? I love what these memories represent, which is to say the ability to change, the ability to see with new eyes, the ability to let go of pre-conceived notions that no longer serve. And here, just as one more example, is my favorite memory of all.

Many years ago, when my son was really little — maybe three or four years old — we were having a moment, as parents and children sometimes do. He and I were driving each other crazy. I have no idea what the issue was. He wouldn’t put on his shoes. Or he wouldn’t brush his teeth. Or he wanted something I didn’t want him to have. Or I didn’t him to do something he was dead set on doing. Or some stupid thing that seemed important at the time. He insisted one way. I insisted the opposite way. And there we were. Both of us mad. And neither of us seeing a good way forward.

Until I looked out the kitchen window. And there in the tree just 12 feet away was Mr. Bluebird in his stylish blue jacket and his jaunty, contrasting orange vest. His was singing his heart out.

“Look!” I exclaimed. “A bluebird!” Our son climbed up on a chair beside me, and the two of us stood there and watched our little feathered friend. Our son had never seen a bluebird before. If I had ever seen one, it was when I was so young I couldn’t remember it. For ages, I had so longed to spot one! And there he was.

Some say bluebirds are the birds of happiness. All I can say is I can no longer recall whatever insignificant thing my son and I were quibbling over. But I remember that bluebird. I remember how both of us, mother and child, were swept into an entirely different moment — one of awe and joy.

I also remember that Mr. Bluebird was wearing an orange vest. Not salmon, not peach, and not Tahitian sunset. It was gorgeous. And I loved it.

Love,

Sylvia