“Mama, what color is the sand?”
“White…white like Grandpa’s beard.”
This was how they always talked; the little boy and his mother. His eyes full of wonder and her voice full of that tender love reserved for mothers.
“Mama, what color is the sea?”
“The sea is green like prairie grass in the rain.”
He didn’t always understand, but he reveled in the silvery sound of the words slipping from his mother’s lips.
“Mama, what color is the sunshine?”
“It’s yellow… like my heart when I see you Little One.”
He asked about the sunshine every day. Colors were their special something, Mama and him. And she had told him once that yellow was the most beautiful of all.
“Mama, what color are the trees?”
“The trees change colors… like life.”
He sat with his father in the front pew. He cried, not really understanding why. His mother was there, but she didn’t speak to him. He wanted to ask her about the rainbow, but Daddy had said she didn’t hear him anymore.
“Daddy, what color is your heart?”
“My heart is grey like the ashes in your mother’s urn.”
“Oh.”
“What color is your heart Little One?”
“…White, like an empty paper before Mama gets out the crayons…
Daddy, do hearts change color like the trees?”
“I think… when we play in the white sand, and see Grandpa’s white beard, and run in the green grass in the rain, and swim in the green sea and soak in the yellow sunshine and watch the trees change color again and again, then our hearts will turn colors again.”
