The Gallery: Green

I’ve got out of the habit of new things; new clothes, new places, new people. Until last week I was wearing all the same clothes I wore before and during being pregnant. I hung on to them, the top I wore when he was born, the top I was wearing when he died. I don’t remember when I bought the one for the first event, but my sister gave me the one I was wearing when he died, on that bizarre and bright day when I felt perfectly normal and ate breakfast before going to disconnect him and walked out of the hospital afterwards and didn’t notice I went home in my pyjamas. On the day of his funeral, a year tomorrow, I was wearing the top I bought for my sisters wedding. It seems odd, I think, to know I wore it on that day and then on so many other ‘slightly dressy’ occasions, not knowing I had really bought it for for my son’s funeral. Funny colours; purple, red-pink, navy blue tops. Not green.

Life here was governed by colour in the old days; all the pink of the princessy girls I had for ages, the blue that Maddy now prefers, the blues we had ready for Freddie. But the blog has never been coloured either of those – it has always been yellow and latterly green. I don’t really, honestly, like the colours assigned to genders and blue just popped up as a difference, not because I think of blue for a boy. It was just the wool in my bag that day I decided to knit a blanket. Even before he was born I almost wished I had chosen something different to knit his blanket in. Blue is so attached to him now. Blue hurts. Blue will hurt if we never have another child, or if we do and we have a girl or if we do and we have a boy.

But green, just lately and yellow, those feel like the colours of the future. If I had another child (and universe, don’t make me pay for this with some twisted fate) I’d almost like a third type, no baggage, not girl, not boy, just a person.

Green is sitting in the garden with a new friend made from the shoots and seedlings of being brave enough (at last) to try something new and different and meet and talk to new people. Green is the colour of trees that remember but keep on growing and changing and could be memorials but are better hung with decorations and made part of life for as long as they live.

Green is being not very good at something, taking photos, but that new friend teaching you how to make a background blurry.

Green feels like hope, like a fuzzy blur of optimism, with a crystal clear star shaped flower in the foreground, all beauty and freshness and life and a hint of blue still tucked away in the past.