Life Is A Coloring Book

Do you remember Brenda Lee singing “My Coloring Book?”   “And for those who fancy coloring books/And lots of people do/Here’s a new one for you/A most unusual coloring book/The kind you’ll never see/Crayons ready?/Very well/Begin to color me.”  The song goes on to assign a “color” to the emotional experiences of a young woman who has lost someone she loves.  “This is the room that I sleep in and walk in/And weep in and hide in/That nobody, nobody’s seen/Oh, color it lonely, please.”

In 1982, Alice Walker wrote her Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Color Purple, which later was adapted to a film and musical of the same name.  The title, “The Color Purple," is based on the philosophy that you shouldn’t walk by, ignore, or fail to see or notice the color purple (or any other color) in the field of life. Everything in life’s journey has a color. 

Life is a coloring book. Everything has a color or is eventually assigned a color, from Brenda Lee’s, “This is the room that I sleep in and walk in/And weep in and hide in/That nobody, nobody’s seen/Oh, color it lonely, please,” to the many colors of cancer—Lung cancer: white; Brain cancer: grey; Breast cancer, pink, Bone cancer: yellow and so on.  September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month—“Teal” is the color for ovarian cancer.  Since mid-July, our daughter, Rachel, has distributed teal bracelets to family members and friends which read:  “In the fight for someone I love,”  “coloring” her Mom’s ovarian cancer diagnosis.   Our grandchildren have sent photos showing off the teal bracelets on their wrists—or perhaps better to say, giving “color” to their love for their grandmother.  That “love—colored teal” has a remarkable healing power.

As in Walker’s book where “the color purple” indicates something you must not walk by or fail to notice in the field of life, so “the color teal” indicates something we can’t walk by or fail to notice.  Coloring books for adults are becoming the new trend, and unlike many of the fads of our day, this one, I think is good for us.  Life is a coloring book:  “Crayons ready?/Very Well/Begin to color [you]”