Pink

When did this obsession with pink begin? You were maybe two years old-- a cherub boy with the sweetest disposition. It started with clothing. You wanted pink sweats, pink t-shirts, pink socks. You had no concept of gender and it didn't come along with a desire to wear dresses or play with dolls. In fact, you rode the line between typical boy or girl activities and interests. You had two moms and no siblings, so while you learned to pee off the back deck (we obviously didn't teach you that!) and loved to be in the kitchen with me inventing new concoctions, you also loved swords and nerf guns and Spiderman. Before the influence of other children tainted your natural self-expression, pink was the color of comfort, love, and made you giddy with delight. I remember walking through Target one day with you in the seat of the cart looking up at me with a grin on your face. "Mama, Mama!" you said, "Let's get pink sheets! Wouldn't that be fun?" So I wheeled the cart to the bedding aisle and his eyes landed on a set of sheets, all pink with a white ruffled edge. "Look, Mama! This is perfect!" I picked it up and placed it in his little boy arms and he held them tight all the way to the checkout.

At three he approached me one evening as I was curled up with books studying for my securities license exam. He sat quietly next to me until I put my books aside and wrapped him in my arms. "What's up, honey?" I said, snuggling his softness into my belly. "Can I paint my room pink? I just love pink so much... don't you think a pink room would be great?" I had to pause because truth be told, I did not love the idea of a pink room, in part because this color has a history in my lineage and comes with baggage, but also because I just didn't think having a pink room would work out so well once he started having sleepovers. "That's an idea," I said. "It's kind of a big deal to paint a room, especially since we just got the entire house painted. What about hanging a few pink sheets on the wall to see how you like it?" He looked at me, trying to read my face as he always did, thought about it, and said, "Yeah, that would work...I think I'm going to love it!" Shortly after this, he started preschool and the wearing of pink faded into the pages of our photo albums. I never heard about him getting teased for wearing pink, so I don't know if it happened.... I just observed that it shifted and the next request around age six was to paint his bedroom walls black. This time he thought it would be super cool to have a black room with stars on the ceiling and blacklight posters. We did not go for that idea and again offered to buy black sheets to get the effect without the difficulty of painting and then repainted the walls.

When Hunter went off to Oregon State in the fall of 2018 he decided to join a fraternity as a way of having a place of belonging. There were many things about the frat that overwhelmed him-- the drinking to oblivion, the macho approach to women, the lack of emotional intelligence-- but there was one thing that made him smile: their polo shirts were pink. He belonged to a frat that sanctified wearing his favorite color from childhood. It was a small comfort in a sea of impossibilities. Being at such a huge school, in a dorm with hundreds of other anxious and stressed students, having his girlfriend break up with him, and dealing with frequent illnesses all made his first year extremely challenging. By spring term he decided to leave the frat because he just couldn't abide by their rules or behavior. However, he kept the pink polo as a souvenir of that fleeting sense of belonging.