Colors

I was raised a good Catholic girl, attending a parochial school. Life was black and white, as were the habits that my teachers wore. My role models were three types, each a contrast. There was my father, my mother and the nuns. My father, who never had religion, said he’d attend church if it were in English (but even after the conversion from Latin, he never went to Mass), drank, and verbally left black and blues in my life. I had the ever-attending-church mom, pious, reverent and stoic - she in her pastels, white-church-veil, and white church-going gloves, (who later revealed two out of wedlock pregnancies, where she went to a nunnery and gave the girls away. Each. Time.) Lastly, I had the influence of the nuns, my educators, (who I later learned, most of them quit the field and left the church.) Even still, this left the "black and white" of religion permanently imprinted.

High school was the first of my public school experiences, with red and white, ra-ra, go Eagles. It was the sixties, and trying to fit was a kaleidoscope of neons and minis, with a plethora of new independent experiences. We held Vietnam moratoriums, exceeded dress codes, and socked-it-to-ya. Desperately, I wanted to fit in; my acceptance was only a purchase away (or so I thought), with a hairpiece and new go-go boots (hopefully), next week. Not belonging was a fate worse than hell, and I begged for each new wave of popularity, financed by the green in my parents’ deep pockets.

Virginity was white. That was clear to me. It was pure and unmistakably the choice for a good Christian girl. I saw colorful characters in my high school experiment to the sound of Janis, and then head to the Janis Youth Home for unwed mothers. I was steadfast, and quite bound in my decision to remain unpolluted. Each of us graduated high school, and diversely struck out independently. Some never returned home from their khaki recruitment, others continued to breathe chalk dust of academia and put initials after their names such as M.D. or maybe Mrs. I held a job at a factory, then a print shop, then a hospital. Uneventful, unproductive and unmemorable, they were my first years out of high school. I might as well have been a nun, and I briefly pursued that as a career, because my life was as sterile as the virginity I clung to. No men were interested; I did not date, and I felt that the vow of poverty, chastity and obedience was no different from my current lifestyle; in fact, it perpetuated the black and white I was living.

Along came “Bix”. We knew each other from a Bible study. He lived on the Portland State campus, and he worked in a Vocational Rehab dry cleaners. His type of employment and future for better employment did not bother me. Careers were never on my mind; it’s why I never chose college outside of high school. We dated. We walked the campus downtown in spring. We stopped and smelled red roses and the tickling green of newly mown lawns on bare feet. Soon, we were talking white picket fences. In less than six months, it was a trailing white train, shared “I do’s,” and the reds and greens of Christmas. Nine months later, we were sorting the pastels of blues and pinks, awaiting the arrival of our first born.

I had proceeded with no plan, but followed the time worn tradition of a gold band and strained peas flung on the wall. These colors were not bliss, however. My perceptions never fully bloomed until three years, and three children later. I saw the constant pink slips my husband brought home, accompanied by the incessant blame of the boss. Never at fault, Bix was afloat in the tempest; he was pallid, puce, and worn. Jaundiced to life, he gave up, as we subsisted on macaroni and cheese for five.

Donning white again, I wore an apron as I flashed my pearly best at graveyard shift truckers, and past-2 a.m. bar-room rejects. I plied them with black coffee and white glazed donuts, hoping against hope for plentiful silver and green in my stained apron pockets before I walked home in the crimson dawn.

It did not seem such a bad existence. Family is what it is all about, and I knew, in my black and white perception, that marriage and home is in line with the direction I’d been set on ever since Sister Maria in first grade. Eight years along this narrow path led me to full time work, day shift. Bix slept in, eventually and haphazardly dressing and feeding the children, and then I’d return home at 5:30 to cook more stale casseroles.

Something inside me began to morph. I witnessed freshness in that other 9-5 world. I saw respect, and I saw joy in relationships. I saw men supporting their families. I asked God about the promises that I leaned on. I felt unanswered. I saw our leaves yellowing, and a sickness in the root of our tree. It began with Bix’s acquiescence to nothingness, and was followed by my desire to grow. He saw no need to change. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” was his response. I wintered this discontent; my love died. My tree withered and never regained its color in the spring. Finally Bix saw the emptiness that could not be filled. He finally heard me when I said, “I don’t love you”: he moved in with his sister.

No one could have prepared me for the spiritual trauma. I had no footings anymore. Divorce was wrong, and I was getting a divorce. Who was I; where was my God? How could I survive living in, through the “never will happen to me’s”? This spiritual free-fall was frightening. My black and white world was up-ended, and I, with it. Recent I was asked about spirituality (which inevitably becomes complicated with the end of marriage), and some advice. I vividly remember my experience. My answer was, and still is: “Colors. Life is full of many colors; that is where to live. Do not fool yourself that life is black and white.”