The Color of a Memory

Several years ago, when I was newly married and was not a mother, I read an article in an issue of "O Magazine" on an airplane. It was written by an older mother and writer who was remembering all of the seasons of her life; she recounted being a young nursing mother with a baby on her hip, and how that season was the shortest of all. I have looked high and low for that article online to no avail; the writer's words were so poignant that they stuck with me, even though I had no child of my own when I read it.

This weekend was ordinary and poignant, and just like that article I read years ago, I suspect I will try to find and capture this weekend as time wears on. Like so many moms my age, I document everything, it seems: my family asks where my friend is if I am NOT holding a camera; I blog; I journal; I try to tattoo everything on my heart.

I can take pictures in different styles and edit them to be different shades, based on what I remember at the time. Was he wearing a white hat? A blue outfit or was it yellow? If I choose the wrong picture, some of the details will be changed or lost.

I can zoom in very close, but even a picture can't really capture all there is to see.

Saturday was pink, in my mind anyway. Full of love and ordinary things and the life of two people who have hurts and dreams and plans and all of the things that make us human, and who also happen to be in love and to have a little boy to raise. We bathed William outside on Saturday night. We'd worked and played all day in the backyard, trying to build our garden, and it seemed like the right way to end the day.

A pink weekend. That's how I'll remember it, anyway.