From the moment I could distinguish color, red was my favorite. With red as a basis I wore every color in the rainbow, often at the same time. My father called me “Gypsy” because of my penchant for bright colors and shiny things.

Somewhere in my mid-30’s I got fed up with trying to match colors. You go into a store and see a nice green sweater, should go great with your blue suit. Get it home and no way, jay – total color disaster, so back to the store it goes. I decided I would only wear black and red. Easy peasy, everything always matches. I bought everything in twos – one in red and one in black. Even shoes. Sometimes I would wear one red shoe and one black shoe – on purpose.

In the late 1980’s I was given an amethyst necklace. It looked nice against my black sweaters but I didn’t have any emotional relationship with the color. Then in the late 1990’s I became addicted to purple. Dark purple, not adolescent teeny-bopper purple. Eggplant purple. Amethyst purple. And yellow once again hit my radar. Purple and yellow – Yes. Love it. Super. But I was still wearing red. It was still a sort of favorite color but not my favorite favorite color.

Green has always been a problem for me. I’ve never really cared for it. Something about green puts me off, tho I must admit my bathroom is now dark green and yellow. There is a gem stone called citrine and while it comes in many shades I prefer the greenish-yellow color. While I wouldn’t wear this color, I might decorate with it and I’ve just purchased citrine earrings. I think that’s as close to wearing green as I will ever come.

But back to red – where it once made me feel up and happy now it makes me emotionally uncomfortable – throws my psychic balance off. Now there are many theories on color and their meanings, I’ve spent quite a bit of time today refreshing my memory, none of it was really helpful. I want to ascribe some deep meaning to my change of attitude towards color.

As you get older your hair goes gray, your skin gets lighter (at least for us olive-skinned folk), so do your eyes – maybe everything about us lightens up. Including our hearts and souls…moving through this particular life, heading on to the next – lighter, brighter, wiser…from base red to light-loving yellow that illuminates the mystical purple. (Yeah, I know – weird mood today huh? Must be the weather.)