4-25-13 RMB Blue

4-25-13 RMB Blue

Dear Rita Mae Brown,

Everyone has a favorite color or at the very least, a color they prefer over others. Mine is blue, especially dark midnight blue. Because it is such a common question, “What’s your favorite color?” I assumed everyone was as attached to their color as I am. I was shocked to find out that is not so.

My niece has gone through phases of liking purple or lavender and red. One sister used to like green, but changed to blue, then other colors. I was aghast. How could you not be loyal to your color??? The more I asked around, the more I realized that I am the odd one…figures. No one was as attached to their color as I am to blue. 

Blue represents peace and gentleness to me and it also contains a certain strength, a powerful strength like the ocean tide, a silent strength like the pull of the moon on those tides. It is the sky, whether day or night, cloudy or clear. It is the ocean, sometimes warm, sometimes calm, sometimes fierce. It is the rain falling heavy or gently misting.  It can be found in a teardrop, whether from pain or joy.

Blue is a friend to me, it makes me happy, hopeful, inspired. I wear more blue than any other color. My closet is a rainbow of blues. Now you see why the green shirt I wore on St. Patrick’s Day was so special.

I noticed that you wore colorful shirts in interviews and talks online, often with blue jeans…I like that J

When I went looking for my current job, that was one of the criteria...to work someplace where I can wear blue jeans to work. Blue jeans are fantastic. I wonder if I would be so attached to them if they were another color.

My big brother’s favorite color when we were growing up was blue and my nephew’s favorite is also blue, a nice bond to share.

This felt important enough to write about, but now I am having trouble conveying what is so important about it, hmph. I guess it is the fact that it carries an element of something beyond itself. Any number of items or air or even things of other colors can have a blue hue. I once stood outdoors fascinated, watching snow fall from the skies over Michigan, on a crisp January night, seeing the blue hue shining over the freshly fallen white snow and sparkling in the snowflakes as they drifted down, bringing with it that peace, gentleness and strength.

People are like this, having an element of something beyond themselves. Your hue is reflected in numerous lives. Mine shines back at me from the eyes of my boys, all my nephews, my nieces, friends and family. Everything we touch, every thought we send, reflects back and propels forward on that which it lands.

A friend called to say she got her copy of Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble Rouser. Over the phone I read the passage about Celeste and Ramelle, from Six of One, that moved me so. She agreed about the beauty of it and she is a much more avid reader than I.

I am enjoying this journey with you. I do hope to finish my books within the next few years, but regardless of what the future holds I am glad I have written these letters. They carry an element beyond themselves, beyond the obvious, more than words on a page -- to what end I don’t know, but I know they do.

All my best,

Loraine