Color Me Grey

:: rough draft letter to my mom before we see each other for the first time since pre-pandemic ::

Before you come over I just want to prepare you; I let myself go. And it’s not because of C19 or shutdowns.

Maybe I shouldn’t send this to you at all. Like, remember back in my twenties when I cheated on my husband and was trying to figure out how to confess to him? I remember your good advice. You were adamant. You said “don’t tell him you cheated on him! You want to tell him to make YOU feel better, not him.” And you were right.

Do you remember when I was a teenager and you checked out the Color Me Beautiful book from the library? Of course you remember. We figured out that you are a summer … and I am a SPRING. I know you remember because every so often you still mention it, sounding envious that I am a SPRING so I can wear colors you can’t.

You hated the color pink and the way the other mothers named their little girls JESSICA. You imitated them saying the name with a saccharine lilt: jessssICKuh. A sickening hiccup hissed with hard candy. You gave me an old name with only one letter to feminize it. Rich with vowels ... devoid of sibilance.

Soft pinks and greys (and every other cool color, but muted) made up your summer palette. We were never allowed to dress up like princesses for Halloween, so being cursed with a summer complexion and its soft pink and grey palette was a real shitter for you.

But your first-born? I was a SPRING. Full of golden promise, like the daffodils coming out for my birthday. Your first baby after three horrible miscarriages.

I bought the deck of SPRING cards with my babysitting money. Rounded corners and all my colors to carry around and refer to when making important decisions about clothes, but really I just liked the colors; a possible vision of someone pretty I could be. It made you happy that I was a SPRING. Like a blessing of good fortune. Golden green youth and eternal fair weather. Proud like you were of my Apgar scores which you bragged on like I'd exited your birth canal Magna Cum Laude, but all it really meant is I was alive. Warm skin like a healthy sporting sunburn in May.

Color Me Beautiful said SPRING complexions should never let themselves go grey. SPRINGS should color their hair forever. So I resolved to never be anything but blonde. You admired my decisiveness guided by wise expertise. And it was final. Until now.

All I really want to tell you is that I've changed. I'm forty-nine. I know you know that, but I don't want to color myself beautiful anymore. Now I just want to color myself grey.

Color me comfortable.

I am aging faster than you. Faster than Daddy. Faster than the good genes you curated for me. I didn't plan for it to happen this way, but now that it is I don't know if I care.

You thought I would never have a problem with my weight. But look at me now! I have finally attained some of the lush expansive body I wanted as a too-skinny kid.

And I am all kinds of grey. Wild grey. Long and wiry. Unsmoothed and inelegant. Uncaring.

I broke my blonde promise and am wearing your colors that you never ever would. A capsule wardrobe of pink and grey. Blankets of soft skies. Mean skies. Dirty pillow fluff and dried up dandelion heads. Soft clouds fleece-lined with sunrise blown slowly by silent wishes.

I let myself go towards the end of the summer. Edging up to fall. Both of us wondering about winter.