True Colors, by Gillian

Tricky things, true colors.  

Betsy and I often see colors slightly differently. Oh, we both agree on what 's red and what's black, but when we come to more subtle hues, we differ. She might describe something as a brownish mauve, while I see it as beige. She may say a color is definitely blue while I see it as a bluish green. 

So what are true colors? 

Years ago we took a watercolor class together. It fascinated both of us to observe the very different mix of colors we would each use to match the roof of the barn or the rocky outcrop on the hill. Needless to say, our paintings of the exact same scene came out very different from each other: not only resulting from our low-grade artistic skills but also because we simply see colors differently.

These days we have made working with colors much more complex than it used to be. Once upon a time our house walls were whitewashed, if they were colored at all. Now, if you decide you want white walls in the bedroom, you are faced with a huge array of choices. Do we want Pearl or Eggshell, or Linen or Ivory or Cloud or Decorator White or Simply White? etc. etc. etc. To determine your answer, you hold a two-inch square of each shade up against your wall and imagine that color covering the entire wall. Yeah, right!

This begs a question. Why do automobile manufacturers appear to be unable to access this embarrassment of riches? We have a Toyota Corolla. It's color, according to the factory paperwork, is Mushroom. It's a low-key inoffensive color and I have no objection to it. My only question is, why have I never seen a Toyota Corolla of any other color? Our other car is a Toyota Rav4. Other than the ridiculous name, it's fine. It is a kind of silver or steel color, again low-key and inoffensive. There are Rav4's of a different color. I have seen several red and a few blue. But the vast majority of them are, yes, the same color as ours. So, Toyota being a pretty popular brand around here, we have two cars equally impossible to find in King Soopers' parking lot because they look look exactly like half of the cars parked there. 

And speaking of strange color choices, what is with the military - maybe just the army, though I'm not sure - and those camouflage uniforms? I somehow missed the switch from the accustomed olive drab, so, at DIA shortly after 9/ll, I was amazed to find the airport awash with heavily armed soldiers in unfamiliar, vaguely leafy, patterned uniforms. What did they think? That we couldn't see them? Or we'd mistake them for plants? Against the angular marble and glass of the airport they stood out like the pyramids rising from the desert. Perhaps, I pondered, that was the idea. After all they were meant to be a Presence, to instill is us, depending on our intentions, either fear or a sense of safety and protection. To me, they emitted more a slight sense of the ridiculous. I wanted to giggle; and I was sorry for that. I respect those who join the Armed Services, and don't want to make them into a figure of fun, even only inside my own head. 

Having learned from the Web that the change of uniform took place in the 1980's, I see how I missed it completely. There is not, and was not at that time, a significant military presence around the Denver Metro Area. Men and women in uniform are not a particularly common sight.

And by the 1980's I no longer had step-sons in the Service. 

But what were they thinking, those powers that be who made the decision? Of course camouflage has always been as important for survival in the military as it is in nature, but in the past it has not been worn, as far as I know, as the everyday uniform. Those men and women would have done well, in their vaguely floral green and brown, crawling through the jungle; but why dress like that at DIA? The other thing that strikes me as odd, is to have camouflage of those colors and curving shapes. Most of those currently making up the group that we chose to call, euphemistically, boots on the ground (as if they were just footwear, not real live people) seem, when I see them on TV, to be either on bare open rocky desert or in mean urban streets, neither of which environment sports a blade of grass never mind a tree. Maybe we just have a huge surplus of leafy camouflage left over from Viet Nam? 

Anyway, who am I to criticize camouflage? I relied strongly upon it for the first forty-something years of my life, ensuring that no-one, most especially I, should catch a glimpse of my own True Colors. If occasionally I did , out of the corner of an eye, then I simply clutched my camouflage more tightly around me and snuffed out the light. Now I pride myself on a full peacock display of my True Colors, standing tall and proud, having burned my camouflage as in the 'sixties they burned their bras. Some of the men and women in what I cannot help but find faintly laughable uniforms, may be wearing physical camouflage but, since we now have marriage equality in the U.S. military, can now be out of their metaphorical hiding places standing tall and proud in their True Colors. In comparison to the significance of that, what on earth does it matter what they wear? Or what color cars are? Or if my gray is Betsy's blue? Displaying our True Colors, whatever they may be and whoever we are, to the world, with pride and dignity; that's what it's all about.

© February 2016

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.