Just a Little Green

The color green, with the exception of greens in nature, has always been my least favorite color. I don’t like green socks, I don’t like green sweaters, I don’t like a green coat. I’m not sure why, but green is the only color I’ve always had a strong aversion to.

A couple of years ago I came across an Indian bedspread, the kind that graced many of the beds in my childhood homes. Featherweight fabric, small detailed designs, a reminder of a sunny San Francisco morning. So, when I stumbled upon such a bedspread, I had to buy it. The problem? It was green. But I told myself it would be used only as a picnic blanket... problem solved. And then one day, while I was deciding what to take to my new place, I pulled the spread out of the closet, gave it a wash and brought it along.

When my bed was delivered I dressed it with a set of white “Hotel” sheets,” cool cotton, crisp and unbelievably soft. Then came a light purple summer blanket, and on top of that the Indian spread. The shade of the green in the fabric is somewhere between light and dark, not like a green in nature. However, I could see how it pulled in the green from outside, from both of my windows that look out onto trees.

A couple of weeks later my mother said she had a lamp for me, but she knows how particular I am about “Things” and made her usual statement: “If you don’t like it, you can give it back.” But when she mentioned its color, I almost refused it sight unseen. As it turned out it was a lovely green, a deep green, not like a green in nature but slightly dramatic, a green from an old movie set, a color you’d not be able to see on screen of course, since the movie would be black and white. So I put the lamp on the floor beside my bed and it took up residency there, with the bedspread and with the trees outside which were now seemingly even closer than before.

When I needed a clock, it couldn’t be just any clock, I needed the right clock. And yesterday, I found it. White, plastic, inexpensive. It’s new but it resembles a clock from the 1950s, and the bold numbers on its face are green. Not a green in nature, but a bright green, a light green, and somehow it’s just the right color for such a clock.

Now it sits on the windowsill, its green numbers draw in the green from the trees, merge with the green on the bed and with the lamp on the floor. The room is inside the trees now, it’s a tree house, a tree room, and the different shades of green encompass me... just as they do in nature.