A Rainbow of Love

Long before I became a parent, I read a children's book that changed my life. It's called, "I love You the Purplest," by Barbara M. Joosse. It was so profound that I have remembered it 10+ years later.

It goes something like this: Mom is fishing with her sons when they ask her whom she loves the most. She goes on to explain her love to them in colors, rather than degrees.

This so changed my thinking, that I could not wait to become a parent and tell my children how intensely I loved them in their color scheme.

Ponygirl is the pinkest. Hers came one evening after we had just moved across the country. Hubby and I were getting out for a much deserved date, and as we were driving, I looked up to see the most incredible sunset I had ever witnessed in my entire life. Pink with orange and yellow swirling around the clouds like cotton candy on fair day. Quickly I called Ponygirl on my cell phone and told her to go out on the porch and look at the sunset. "That's how much I love you," I said. All she said was, "wow!"

Superhero was easy. Blue. He was blue from the day I found out he was a boy. I describe his blue to him as the azurite rock we have in our rock collection. The most intense blue you can think of. It's electric. Or I say the brightest blue of the sky at the start of the day. Intense and cool. It's refreshing. He likes that.

Princess has wanted her color changed, but she has been yellow to me from day one. A bright hot sunny yellow, with the intensity of the sun and the joy of a sunflower lifting its face to God. She is pure summer with flowers, bees and the smell of nectar (when she's had a bath, anyway).

Lady bug is shaping up to be a green. She is fresh, and new like the new spring leaves lifting their tiny heads above the dirt. She is sweet and happy like the newness of the season, and brings promise of life and happiness to our family.

Now, the children are not content to be the only ones with colors, so they have demanded that hubby and I claim our own patch of the rainbow.

Hubby to me is red with all the passion and hoo-rahs the part calls for.

The kids say I am white. Not sure where that comes from, except that maybe they still think I'm perfect (hah!), but for whatever the reason, I appreciate their desire to love me back.

Loving the gold at the end of the rainbow,
Brandie