Red

Sylvie has asked me several times in her life, “What’s your favorite color?” and in recent years has answered her own question with, “Red, right?” and I can tell her with all honesty that, “Yes, red is my favorite color.” When she asks why, I always say, “It’s always been my favorite", but I have put my finger on the why. It’s not so hard.
What is red that makes it my favorite? Well, let’s see, red is: clown shoes and noses, my favorite childhood swimming suit, the sun on a summer night that looks like it takes up half the sky, the moon on a stormy morning that foretells trouble and lights the clouds. Red is baby cheeks and glamorous lipstick and painted fingernails. It’s valentines and poppies and the color of love. Its sweet summer cherries and crisp fall apples and that weird cake called velvet. Red is a shirt I got for Christmas with my first real pair of jeans when I was six. It’s the color of hair I always wish I had. It’s that rind around real bologna that you have to peel off before you eat it. Gouda cheese has a red rind too. I like that. It’s the color of the sand on one of the beaches in the town where I grew up and of the roads on Prince Edward Island where we took a great vacation. It’s the color of my first bike. My Grandpa rebuilt it and my Dad taught me to ride it when there was still snow on the ground.
I don’t know if the color of so many of my favorite things makes them special, or if they have made red special. It really doesn’t matter. Red to me is so many things that I love. It will always be my favorite. I will enjoy finding many more things in my life that are rosy, ruddy, ruby, and beautiful. I love it and thank God for it. Red, to me, is happiness. Anne