The Color of Feelings

by Jo Robertson

Three year old Annie was whining the other day.

“What’s wrong, baby,” says her mother, seriously refraining from any eye rolling.

“Well,” Annie says, “I just have a bad feeling that someone’s going to eat me.”

“Don’t you hate that feeling?” her wise mom answers.

The color of fear – is it black, blue, red?

I have a dear friend whose father died young, leaving her mother with six children, the oldest of whom was twelve. She and her husband had been long-time friends with a couple who also had six children, all nearly the same ages.

The mother of this family also died. As time passed and with much soul-searching, the man and my friend’s mother decided to marry, blending their family of twelve children. Wow! That’s courage! They eventually had a thirteenth child who blended the two families.

The new father was a psychologist whose favorite story was about the child who kept doing all his drawings at school in black. Everything black, gloomy, dark. He was concerned about the child until she explained that when she got to the table, all the crayons were gone and black was the only color left.

Sometimes black is just a color.

We talk about being “blue.”

Or being so mad we see “red.”

Daffodils are yellow and such a friendly color that we think of sunshine and the outdoors.

Brides wear white, sometimes.

So what about you? What’s your favorite color? Why?

What colors elict what emotions in you? Is green really soothing and why so many institutional places have walls of green? Is blue cool and detached? Is black or dark brown dangerous?

My favorite color is purple and as I grow older I love more and more the poem about wearing purple when I grow older. It’s such a bold color.