I walk through a busy fabric store. There are racks of fabric 7 feet tall and not organized well. I walk through the aisles over and over. “What color will I paint my room?” I think. “Blue. Definitely blue. Blue blue blue blue. Not blue like my old walls in st louis. I lived in one house and one apartment and both the walls were a bright sky blue and it made me want to puke. I hate st louis I don’t want to ever feel the way I did back then.” No reminders! I want to start new. But I want blue.

I see fabric colors of blue but they are all too faded. “This is shitty old fabric!” I think. “tsk tsk…how do they expect people to find what they need here?” I finally find a deep blue, the kind of blue that the sky is right before it turns inky. “Good, this will do”

I walk up to the front desk where this 60 something year old woman with frizzy orangey hair is working. She looks bored and unhappy. She wears tiny glasses with a pearly pink bead holder. I hand her my scrap of fabric and say, “I would like my paint to be this color but more vivid, I really want it to pop! Maybe you could put some glitter in it too. Silver glitter or something?”

She rolls her eyes and walks in the back. She comes out and is carrying my bucket of paint and clomps it down in front of me.

I am in my home in Pollock pines and im setting up my paint. I go into the farthest corner room in the back of my house and start painting the room but I stop and realize that I really need to be painting the kids playroom! They’re happiness is far more important than mine…I will paint their room orange! I think Maddox and Remington will like that. Yes definitely orange!

I go into the playroom and paint it orange then I add yellow strips and in each stripe I add a tall thin tulip- red, purple. Then I paint a giant sun on one wall and when I paint the sun I am painting actual light and bursting swirly sunrays. YES! All of my nieces and nephews will love this!

I turn off every light except I leave one TV on. People on the street will think someone is home...no one will break in. I am so clever.

………………………………

I am sitting in the passenger seat of a HUGE suburban. Don’t know who’s driving it, but we are circling round a very crowded parking lot. Its very hectic, breaking, honking, flipping the bird. I have a box full of old lipsticks on my lap. They are all shades of red. I choose a deep merlot colored stick and circle it round and round on my lips. “This is a sloppy job, I wish I had some lip liner,” I think. I try and dab it and spread it evenly on my lips with my index finger. “Useless” I think. I move onto applying some eyebrow liner. “Why can’t I steady my hands? This is even harder than my lips!” I do a very poor job on my brows. I straiten a tiny black-feathered hat on my head. We finally park. I get out of the car and I am in a crowd of around 20 people. Family I guess but I don’t know them. My African American mother stands at the apex of this crowd. She is dressed in a bright coral 1940’s dress. Tons of buttons. She looked distressed. No one says anything and I step forward and say “I will not forget you mother” and then I hand her a small plate decorated with doves.

This is the exact image on the plate I gave "Mother" but I think there were 5 of them