the feel of color part 2

There is nothing as wonderful as a brand new box of crayons. I bought the big ninety-six pack last summer, and it came complete with a built-in sharpener.

"They are for the kids," I told myself.

Yet I couldn't help but feel a little excited as I brought them home. I longed to open them, breathe in their scent, and make that first waxy mark on a blank sheet of paper.

My son was fascinated by the sharpener. We had to dig around in the junk drawer and the back of the craft box for some old worn down nubs of crayons to test out the new contraption. We soon had several very tiny, perfectly sharp and paperless little bits of color in front of us.

Next it was time to look over the new crayons themselves. "Mauvelous" was his favorite. I searched to make sure "Burnt Umber" was still there like when I was a child. It was.

When our examination was complete, we moved on to the coloring books. Once empty spaces of black and white began to burst with color. My daughter came in and joined us, and we spent the next few hours working on our pages.

When everyone finished I dove into a new task: color organizing. As a child I would arrange all the crayons, markers, and drawing pencils by color. I spent an inordinate amount of time sorting, categorizing, and subcategorizing by hue. Of course it didn't last. Within a week the organization I so meticulously created would crumble, almost literally. Crayons would break and their wrappers tear. The pencils would be out of order and the tips of the markers would fray and dry out. So of course, it wasn't long before the new box of crayons I had purchased for the kids became a mess of broken pieces scattered at the bottom of the craft box.

I was bothered to no end by this disarray, so a few weeks ago I purchased a set of colored pencils to use in my mandala coloring books. I guarded them carefully from the little fingers who would, I knew, beg to use them the minute they got wind of a new art supply in their midst.

I think the perfectly sharpened tips and organized color scheme lasted about one week.

"Please, please let me use them! I'll be careful I swear."

And so the seal was broken and now my lovely, colored pencils are scattered all over the dinning room table next to a stack of construction paper and a roll (my last) of Scotch tape. At first I felt angry.

"Those are mine! Can't I have ONE thing in this house that no one else touches?"

I felt like I needed to snatch them away, hide them, and protect them from those little people grasping at everything I have.

But the feeling passed quickly, because, really, who can horde color? How selfish would it be to keep "Cerulean" hidden away from those I love? What right do I really have to shove"Lime Green" or "Orchid" in drawer for no one to experience but myself?

After all, color is a shared joy. No one should be allowed to smother a rainbow.

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You can read the original "feel of color" here.