What is your favorite color?

"What is your favorite color?" I remember getting asked this several times as a kid. Like every other kid I would blurt out my favorite color of the moment. It would hardly ever be the same color I said the previous time the question was asked. I still do not know the answer to this question. I have colors that I love, others I hate, and some I really have no opinion about. That is because I associate colors with feelings, moods, or moments in my life.
Blue and green always calm me down. They both remind me of the ocean. I can not really say if the ocean is more blue or green though. It is ever changing into a mix of blue, green, white, and gray. When I see these colors I almost always see a certain ocean, The Gulf. The beaches on the Florida panhandle take my breath away. There is nothing better. I can feel the warm, white sands beneath my toes, smell the salt in the air, and see the blue-green water swell up into waves that crash along the shores. Those are the things I think about when I see blues and greens.

Green can also makes me think of grass. I love the color of grass. Every time I pass a field of grass I have the urge to take off my shoes and run through it. The chance to do this does not come often living here in the desert, so when I go home to Alabama that is what I do. I walk through my parents huge yard barefooted and I beg my dad to mow. I love to mow grass. The smell of freshly cut grass is intoxicating and it reminds me of home.

Blue is the color I painted my bedroom. It is a soft sky blue that can almost look white. It calms me just walking in there. We decorated the walls with pictures of the ocean. Those pictures were carefully chosen and all are black and white. I love black and white pictures. Black and white photographs decorate my home. When I paint I almost always use black and white. I have been painting since I was a child. As I got older I took to painting portraits of famous people and you can guess what two colors they were painted with. It is amazing to me the depth and character you can capture with just dark and light.

Red makes me feel warm and comforted. I enjoy all shades of red. When I sit down to color with my children, I only want to use the red crayon. I have no explanation for this, except I love it. I put an old red tricycle in my garden. On the seat I set a pot of Impatients. What color is that tricycle? Its a red radio flyer. It makes me smile every time I see it. It reminds me of carefree times as a child. It also reminds me of this little red tractor my dad has on his porch. The same little tractor he rode as a child. He has kept it all these years so that his grandchildren can enjoy it. That is exactly what they do when they visit.

The sun makes wonderful colors of red,orange,pink, and purple. If I were watching the sun set I would tell you that those were my favorite colors. When the sun goes down out west the sky is glorious. There is no way to pick one of those colors as my favorite, they all are.

I believe a child should be allowed to choose what color he paints his room. My parents always let my sister and I do this even if they disagreed. When I was six years old I chose mint green and my sister chose fushia. When I was twelve I chose hunter green walls and a cranberry red ceiling, my sister once again chose pink but this time it was Pepto Bismo pink. To this day I can not pick up a bottle of that medicine without seeing her room. It was horrible. To each his own. I loved both my rooms equally but the hunter green/cranberry room was amazing. It gave the most comforting feeling in the evenings and was easy to wake up to in the mornings. A couple months after I had painted my mom brought me a article from one of her magazines. It stated that you could induce a calming effect with dark green walls and red ceilings. How funny to discover this on my own. That is just how I am though. I always go with what feel right to me at the moment. My friends have been joking with me lately because everthing is pink and brown. My new jewelry box, my notebook which I carry everywhere, and even a couple new additions in my wardrobe have been pink and brown. I am not going to do anything drastic with these colors though. I still can't get those pink rooms my sister had out of my head.

There are other colors I love as well. The inside of a seashell. The color of my lavender and salvia. The yellow bow I put in my daughter's hair. I could never choose one of these colors as my favorite though. What is my favorite color? I guess it depends on where I am at and what I am doing. You can always expect a different answer from me.