Easy to get on with, gregarious, cream goes with everything, in any situation. On a family holiday to Disney land, out to lunch at the Peninsula, to the beach with the relatives from Ireland, for tea and cake at the park, a foil for all the other colours.
But now I realise you’re not a colour, cream. You’re a texture. Or texture itself. The first thing that comes to mind is warmth. The depth and warmth of a sheepskin rug, the textured pattern of a cable knit, an arran sweater, heavy. Not cloying, but heavy enough to feel it’s comforting weight. Supporting and cosseting when you need the comfort, and sometime whether you need it or not. Or perhaps when you don’t even realise you need it. Perhaps a wake up call that the warmth and the comfort are necessary? Even if we don’t want them. If you were a colour, you’d definitely be cream, but that’s only because of all the scarves, rugs and jumpers, the sheepskins.
It’s more than the colour, it’s the texture of it. Gentle, warm, comforting, cosseting…once I thought it was too much, but now I appreciate the support – like holding space, helping me to breathe, when I didn’t even realise the space and the breath were missing.
Maybe missing on both sides? See a need, fill a need. On both sides.
Relax and let someone in. On both sides.
This could be boiled down to one word, support. On both sides.
This hasn’t been the first of these essays to make me cry, but it has been the first of this series that I’ve written with tears streaming throughout. I told you I didn’t know what colour you were, but then I remembered, the realisation came that it’s not colour, it’s the warmth itself, the warmth.
It’s texture.
If it could be a colour it would be cream mostly. But not the fresh kind though…you can have too much of that. A love shown and expressed through food, prawns in the main.
Again, how does it take an exploration of colour to make me realise something I hadn’t noticed before about my own life, or a family member? Warmth…hugs, rugs, curtains, soft furnishings in general, all the things I generally eschew.
So now this one is interesting, where others inspire colour and I realise my perception of them is tied up with and selected as a colour – this one is definitely a texture. Sheepskin is too warm, too soft, too supportive, resisted for so long, deemed overly cosseting, but now the realisation that this creamy colour is more than just that, It has form. It’s woolly!
Perhaps this might be the next direction – texture?
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