Today the sky is various shades of white and grey with a tiny splotch of blue that can not promise to break through. My son and I are in Santa Monica on a short road trip.
While he’s sleeping, I take a walk down Pico Boulevard past Woodlawn Cemetery bumping paths with students heading to class, their black backpacks propelling them forward. A young woman wears fuschia leggings and the color stands out against the grey of the sidewalk and sky.
“Hope the sun comes out,” Ron Dad texts in response to yesterday’s grey pics of the Pacific. It hasn’t, but since we are on a trip to look at the college here, the less than perfect weather seems like a good thing. Get used to the everydayness of things in this new place. I want to tell my son that there will be days like this. Days when you feel sad and isolated. But then I remember that my son actually likes the overcast weather. He says it helps him focus on creating things. Like mother, like son.
I continue following the colors. I find orange and yellow hibiscus and elegant magenta bougainvillea popping through the cyclone fences, pastel and royal blues on the community mural on the building by the library, a bold gold, brown and white geometric Aztec dancer posed against a crimson backdrop, an orange monarch butterfly, red poppies and a blue and yellow sunrise painted on an apartment building decorated in sections of orange, pink, blue and yellow like an extravagant party cake, lowered onto its side.
Since he’s our second kid, and in a year and a few months he will move out to find his way on his own. And we will have an empty nest. The tinge of melancholy I feel is overwhelmed by excitement for him, all that he will experience, all people whose paths will cross and all the colors he will see.
Wendy Lea Writing 