The Color of Love

Mom didn’t share all of her world with me, but she did share this. Maybe because she had no one else to tell; maybe she because she thought I needed to hear.

I’ve told myself this story a hundred times, yet like a stone smoothed over by a rolling river, time’s robbed my memory of certain specifics. So excuse any embellishments, but know the feelings are accurate.

These refrains comfort me, like I’m falling back into her familiar embrace. So, if you will, let me share her embrace as best I can remember it:

“Every day her hair would be a different color. Blonde. Brown. Blue. Sometimes, I suppose, changing even between dropping off her child in the morning and picking them up that afternoon. Always bountiful, always bright.

“But who cared? I figured her hair was just a reflection of her always bountiful, always bright personality.

“She always asked how her child was doing. Asking what her child needed. Asking how she could help her child get better. Be better. She was always there.

“Until she wasn’t.

“That child’s father, until that day a stranger to my classroom, huffed and puffed towards me, voice oscillating somewhere between flustered and furious. ‘Can you believe it? She’s locked up! She was out here hoeing! She’s somebody’s momma! Hoeing!’