TheBanyanTree: The Color of Light

[Pam Lawley]

I'm always leery of complimenting somebody's writing for fear I'll
sound simple and insincere - sometimes it sounds that way to me.

But I'm just going to have to chance it here...  I LOVED this
story!!!!!!!!!!!!  I think this is my new very-best favorite from you.
 Amazing...  thank you!

On 10/1/12, auntiesash <auntiesash at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is amazing and beautiful.  I love the shading of non-beautifulness
> behind the story.  Rich and full of foreshadowing.  Makes me wanna know
> more!
>
> Thanks for sharing this!
> sash
>
> On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 9:33 AM, Monique Colver
> <monique.colver at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I tried capturing it in jars, first a Hellman’s mayonnaise, not only
>> rinsed
>> out, but scoured, cleaned within an inch of its life. Outside was the
>> crisp
>> light of early fall, the trees not yet turning but on the verge. The sky
>> bright with free floating dreams, the kind that rarely float close enough
>> to catch. I stood underneath the pear tree where the light was subdued,
>> and
>> I held up my jar, as high as I could reach, and the light flowed in. It
>> filled my jar, stopping just short of the top, a clear bright color with
>> the promise of cool nights and fire.
>>
>> When I put the lid on the light tried to escape, pushing back against the
>> lid while I pushed down, and just a bit of it got out, not much, but more
>> than I’d like. I wanted the jar full, so it could last all winter, and
>> not
>> run out halfway through January.
>>
>> I tried a pickle jar, scrubbing the jar first with a scouring paid, and
>> though I couldn’t fit my whole hand in I used two fingers, wanting to
>> make
>> sure the color of the light wouldn’t be contaminated by any extra pickle
>> flavor. I stood next to the house on the first cold crisp day of winter
>> when the air was brisk enough to turn my nose red. Instead of holding the
>> jar up I swept it next to me, scooping up the light. In the jar the light
>> looked white, though it was as clear as the sky. I was stronger this
>> time,
>> and sneakier, and before the light knew what was happening the lid was on
>> tight. It wasn’t as much light as I had in the mayonnaise jar, but in the
>> summer I don’t need as much of the winter light, so it should last me.
>>
>> By spring we had moved, and the light I wanted to capture wasn’t
>> available
>> at our new place. I had early fall, and the first day of winter, but I
>> wanted the spring of where we used to live, not the flat spring of where
>> we
>> were living. The spring air where we used to live was full of promises,
>> the
>> dreams drifting down close enough to touch before they spun away again,
>> light as gossamer, as fragile as a soap bubble. But where we were now,
>> there were no dreams floating by, just a flat blankness of space, with no
>> color to the light at all. It was as if the color was gone, replaced with
>> fallen dreams that crumbled to grey ash in the harsh spring days.
>>
>> I didn’t try to save any of it. I wanted no reminders of that spring, and
>> I
>> scuttled through the days with my eyes half-closed. Sometimes, but only
>> rarely, I would open the Hellman’s jar a tiny bit, just to get an idea of
>> fall or winter. This would last an hour or two before fading away again.
>>
>> And that summer was the summer I left home, packing up my jars and my
>> memories, and heading out of town, walking down the two-lane highway away
>> from everyone I had ever known. When I couldn’t walk anymore I stopped,
>> and
>> I sat on a boulder twice the size of me, and I put my two jars next to
>> me,
>> their colors out-of-place in the heat of the summer. These were cool
>> clear
>> colors, not the dry desert colors of where I was now, and I resolved to
>> return to those colors.
>>
>> The next day they found me though, pulling up alongside me in the wood
>> paneled station wagon, calling to me. “Annie, come get in the car.”
>>
>> I kept walking, foolishly hoping they would think I was someone else.
>>
>> The car stopped then, and my father, a short man with a smile of regret
>> and
>> an air of having been done wrong, got out of the car. This was what I had
>> feared the most, that he would find me and take me back. But I stopped,
>> and
>> turned, and looked at him.
>>
>> What I saw on his face was not happiness, but it wasn’t sadness either.
>> “Annie, you have to come home now.”
>>
>> “I can’t see the color of the air there,” I told him, knowing he wouldn’t
>> understand. She would, if she would get out of the car, but she wouldn’t.
>>
>> “Foolishness.” He scratched his chin, overgrown with a few days’ of
>> stubble, and he stood with his legs slightly apart, ready to run after me
>> if I should take to running. Just in case. It had happened before, me
>> deciding to run, but I’d learned that no matter how hard I tried, he’d
>> always catch up to me, grab my arm, and pull me back towards him so hard
>> I’d probably fall, and he wouldn’t catch me.
>>
>> “Air doesn’t have a color. Just get in the car.”
>>
>> My mother peered out the side window at me, her brow furrowed. She never
>> understood why I ran off, though she knew what I meant about the color of
>> the air. Sweat glistened on her upper lip, and on her forehead, and I
>> walked to the car, thinking of how beautiful she was even as she was
>> determined to return me to my prison.
>>
>> Towards the end of summer I took an empty jar, this one having held
>> salsa,
>> and I scrubbed it clean with the scrub brush my mother kept for the
>> potatoes, and when I’d done that I scrubbed the label off, and then I
>> scrubbed off all the glue. I wanted it perfect, one perfect jar for the
>> end
>> of summer light.
>>
>> I walked out at twilight, past the end of the street where there was
>> nothing but desert, and I held my jar high, willing in the still desert
>> air. The twilight air had more color to it than the daytime air, and the
>> briefest glimmer of hope that sparkled like a worn bit of metal that has
>> just the slightest bit of life left to it.
>>
>> Once the lid was on, keeping in the twilight air so it couldn’t get out,
>> I
>> took it home, and I placed it on the shelf next to the fall and the first
>> day of winter, and they glimmered together, far off dreams and the
>> present,
>> telling me to hold on, that spring would come again, and that next time
>> perhaps I could capture it. Next time perhaps I would want to capture it,
>> the spring of a new start, the dampness of spring soil waiting for seeds.
>>
>> The color of the air glimmering on my shelves, telling me to hold on,
>> that
>> new colors were on their way.
>>
>>
>> Monique Colver
>> An Uncommon Friendship: a memoir of love, mental illness, and friendship
>> Now available at
>> Amazon<
>> http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Monique+Colver
>> >
>> and
>> at www.AnUncommonFriendship.com <http://anuncommonfriendship.com/>
>> www.ColverPress.com
>> monique.colver at gmail.com
>> (425) 772-6218
>>
>
>
>
> --
> *-------------------------------------------*
> *‎" "You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, *
> *                                      but you do have some say in who
> hurts you." ** *
> *                    - The Fault in our Stars (John Green)*
>