TheBanyanTree: The Color of Light

Mon Oct 1 09:57:37 PDT 2012

You? Never!

Thank you!

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

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 9:55 AM, Pam Lawley <pamj.lawley at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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)*
> >
>