The Wrong Color

12 Days of Thanksgiving: DAY FIVE

I have a picture hanging in my office. Let’s face it; I’m the mommy of three young children. I have a LOT of pictures hanging in my office. This particular one is a pencil drawing of a fish bowl. The bowl is nicely outfitted with three houses. One petite fish swims above them. There is a sun shining in a partly cloudy sky above the bowl, and a tiny carton of fish food stands beside it.

The picture makes me smile. It’s one of many the kids have made in school that are peppered throughout the house. They’ve grown to have a preference for hanging them in my office. I think it’s because they know that’s where I am during the day while they’re gone to school. And I tell them I miss them so much during those times.

So, it makes me smile. Little Drummer Boy made the picture last year in first grade art class. It’s punctuated with spots of watercolor. Purple and green and yellow and orange houses. An orange goldfish. A yellow sun and fish food jar. I smile because he made it. And it’s a great drawing. And a reminder of him as a first-grader. And I smile because of how he presented it.

LDB went searching for it in his backpack after school. He wanted to show me. He was fairly bursting to talk about everything depicted there. The crux of which seemed to be…

“Mrs. Pugh said we could color things the wrong color if we wanted to.”

The wrong color. It took me a minute to notice it. And my Drummer Boy was quick to fill in the gaps. It was the bubbles. He chose to make the bubbles red. And, I guess it’s true; bubbles in a fish bowl aren’t supposed to be red.

Little Drummer Boy was quite proud of himself for taking Mrs. Pugh up on her generous offer to use the wrong color. And I was too. It was just a small bucking of the expected coloration, but I could see the freedom it gave him to express himself. To color his own picture. His own storyline.

Sometimes to experience a small freedom from our circumstances, we just need permission to color it differently. And if we are unable to find someone to offer that permission, we give it to ourselves. The permission to color our own day, our own lives, independent of the things that may have bound us or been expected of us yesterday.

In times of transition, stroke by stroke, we re-color our lives. As I look at the fish bowl, I’m thankful for the small reminders that each day is new. Each moment is new. And ready to be colored anew. And it’s ok to use the “wrong” color.