Reflections of Orange and Black
***Welcome to my October Blog Exchange partner, Fishy Girl It was great to be your Blog Exchange partner this month.***
Orange and black were my high school colors. They are also the colors of fall, with red, yellow, and brown. And of Halloween.
Once, when I was a junior in high school, the guy I was dating was going to basic training down in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and one weekend his parents drove me down with them to see him for a brief weekend. I knew they were gearing up for the homecoming dance back at home, and ditzy me was surprised to see the walls of a restaurant where we ate in Kentucky decorated in orange and black streamers. It took me a while to realize that it was decorated for Halloween. D’oh!
Orange is the color that my mother-in-law went crazy about when my then-fiance and I announced our plans to marry in October. “Lovely, a fall wedding! We can decorate with pumpkins and hay bales,” she chortled. I explained that it was a wedding, not a hoedown, and if she wanted to have pumpkins at home she was welcome to it, but I didn’t want them at the church/reception. She had not yet learned that I mean what I say, back then, so she went so far as to have pumpkins in the church parking lot. I rather vehemently told everyone who could hear that if I walked down the aisle and saw those pumpkins sitting there I would kick them over, right then and there. Yep, I was cranky, but I have always felt that to each his/her own on their wedding day; MIL had the opportunity to do what she wanted with her wedding, she didn’t get to do a do-over just because her son was getting married. I was overly touchy, yes, but I didn’t have a mother and was doing the bulk of the planning and execution of my wedding by myself, and I felt that MIL was pushy precisely because I didn’t have a mother and she thought she could push her opinions on us since my mother wasn’t around to do it. I missed my mother tremendously, but my MIL wasn’t the stand-in I wanted.
The pumpkins stayed in the car. They looked beautiful on her porch steps after the wedding.
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Black is the color of the night. And of mourning.
I remember once when I was little, about 10 years old, I think. My family used to go down to Nags Head every summer for vacation. One night, late, when we were going up the stairs to our cottage, my mother said, softly, “Girls, look up.” We did, and oh, the sight! I have never, ever seen a sky so black, but sprinkled like salt with the most stars I’ve ever seen in the night sky. Even to today. I grew up in the DC metro area, where even in fairly remote suburbs you still get a strong glow from the city lights, strong enough that only the brightest of stars is ever visible with the naked eye. I imagine I will never see another sky so black, yet, to me, so alive.
That moment is all the more special because of mourning. Because, five years later, my mother would be gone. Because most of my memories of my mother are not positive, because I was a teenager during her last years, full of angst and strife and just generally being contrary, trying to find my own identity and figure out my place in life. In many ways I’m still trying to find that. But my relationship with my mother mostly consisted of her yelling, of me not listening, or of rolling my eyes. Of her criticizing, of me never living up to what I thought she expected of me. Now that I’m a mother myself I still mourn, I miss her so, never having had the chance to right the wrongs I committed, to let her know how much I loved her. But I do know how much she loved me, and that for all the things I did wrong, I did an awful lot right. I’m using that now to make sure I remind all my kids how much they do right, and how much I love them. Every single day.
Black is a color I never wore, until the first funeral I attended, my own mother’s funeral. A color I’ve worn all to often since.
The color of night.
I’m FishyGirl, mom to four monsters under the age of 8. I am a lousy housekeeper and a voracious reader, and I blog to keep my sanity. I want to thank Laura for hosting me today for the Blog Exchange. You can find her take on orange and black over at my place, The Fish Pond.
All About Me
My mother’s high school colors were orange and black, too. I found an old shirt and I was laughing at how faded and worn the school colors had become!
What a beautiful reminder to cherish the ones closest to us!
Thanks for being my blog exchange partner! It has been great having you here!
It sounds like this time of year you really miss your mom. Don’t blame you.
And I used to work in Nags Head. Oh my — yet another topic for the next time we run together.
hahaha I love how you stuck up for yourself on the wedding decorations!
The juxtiposition of the two stories is lovely. I wish I could say something to ease your loss. Know that your mom knows, whereever she is, what you feel.
Oy the Mother-in-Law story. Good for you for standing up to her right away.
ugh – the mother in laws! but, really, a pumpkin wedding? what was she thinking?
Thanks for hosting me for the Blog Exchange, Laura. It was fun being here.