Ammi Midstokke: A safety announcement on winter colors
Sometime around mid-November, Mother Nature uses a giant, invisible turkey baster of sorts to siphon all the color out of the world. The fields become a washed out swath of bland. The tree line is defined primarily by contrast. The sky only changes in its proximity and threat of suffocation. Even our wardrobes, in unspoken solidarity, turn a mournful black with the occasional rebellious flair of a holiday red.
In Europe, there must be some law that says nothing with a cumulative RGB number over 14 is allowed in shop windows until March. Unaware of this, I once wore a scandalously pink coat through downtown Frankfurt mid-December, forcing shocked mothers to cover the eyes of their children, and nearly causing a streetcar pileup.
I believe the cone cells of our eyes (those which allow us to see color), go on a seasonal sabbatical, during which we accept the grayscale reality of our world until the first vernal crocus spotting.
Were it not for my husband dressing like a traffic cone some days, I may lose my ability to see color altogether. In two different shades of alarmingly florescent cotton (no doubt labeled as class-1 carcinogen colors, due to their ability to pierce through even the dark matter at the center of the universe), my eyeballs are shocked out of their monochromatic existence, and into a state of mesmerized stare.
My pupils, accustomed only to a complete dilation state in their desperation to absorb any shade beyond beige, snap to pinholes, as if the color might seep into my wintery brain and possess me. If that were to happen, I might be compelled to leave the house in a shade of fuchsia or, god forbid, Easter pastels, triggering a quantum fluctuation that causes the universe to collapse in upon itself.
Occasionally, I see a citizen dabbling in disaster under the guise of the Christmas spirit or New Years celebrations (doubly dangerous on account of all the sequins). It seems there have been some cosmic exceptions to red, green, and champagne, but only the wanton and the reckless would expand their sweater palette beyond these. Or perhaps the colorblind, which I suspect my husband is, or at least we intimate so as not to suggest he is fashion-blind.
Only his propensity to Smartwool has saved the known universe. In a serendipitous alignment of temperatures and the colorless time continuum, Charlie’s shirt shades shift into a docile blend of navies and forest greens during the months of darkness. If the patagucci brands of the world start producing construction safety wear, we’re in trouble, folks.
No, my friends, however tempting, however aching your longing for lavender, however deficit you may be in Duck Egg Blue or Damask Rose or Daffodil Yellow (with a whopping RGB code of 255, 255, 49), winter is upon us. All you can hope for is snow and the blue-sky kiss of the heavens from time to time.
Our only consolation or harm-reduction therapy being a cherished relationship with our full-spectrum lights, and the regular consumption of Vitamin D doses just below the threshold of causing kidney stones, we must abstain from our floral prints and hopeful hues. And don’t even think about linens, regardless of color, because they are only the tantalizing prelude to poor choices. One minute you’re thinking you just want something airy, the next minute you’ve put on a Hawaiian shirt and the macrocosm shudders.
The price of our fields of April balsam arrow root, the unfurling viridescent of May leaves, our June explosions of honeysuckle reds and oranges, the millions of stalks of iridescent purple lupine carpeting the forest floors, the pink of wild rose, Indian paint brush, fireweed and spreading phlox, is our penance of an anemic wintery lent.
Should the oppressive cloud become too dismal, one can still find a less dangerous dabbing of color in the woods, where the tamarack needles leave a secret carpet of gold beneath the canopy of pines, defiant fungi offer flashes of red and orange, and the susurration of the trees seems to whisper a promise of riotous resilience, a revolution of new growth in all shades of emerald and bloom of brightness, come spring.
Until then, we’ll just have to smell the color. Simply kick the dirt, and breathe deeply.
Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com