Second glance reveals true colors

Sometimes the answer is right in front of you.

I was looking for a color, the perfect shade of golden yellow, but nothing was quite right.

I collected paint samples, pieces of fabric and even scraps of paper. But I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted.

Then, one Saturday morning, as I did my housekeeping chores, I watered a pot of ivy that sits on a small table in the living room. The potted plant rests in a majolica planter I picked up one summer on the Oregon coast.

I stopped for a moment and took a good luck at the piece, remembering the day I found it in a rambling antique mall in Astoria. I’d been attracted to the colors of the pot when I saw it for the first time but I’d gotten so used to it I’d stopped seeing it. I hadn’t noticed that the gold stripe on the piece of pottery was the perfect shade. The color I’d been looking for had been right there the whole time.

That’s how it is with the people and things we live with. They get so familiar to us we lose the ability to see their true colors. What a shame.

The pretty majolica pot is one of my favorite treasures. It has survived the culling and editing of belongings more than once.

Special things, like special people, deserve a second look now and then.