Blue

I had a long blue dress, tiny flower pattern, but mostly blue. It was the 70's, a maxi was allowable, but it mattered little to me what was in fashion, I loved the feel of long skirts around my legs. Somehow I managed to get my mother to make me this bit of cotton joy. I wore it all summer, I wore it whenever I could get away with it, I wore it until it was not floor length anymore, I wore it to bits and shreds, and made a quilt with what was left. There are no extant photographs of me in it, since it was so much a play dress, not what my mother wanted to remember me in. Perhaps as well, wouldn't want to feel embarrassed about how I looked in it. I would have other long skirts, but none would be worn with such joy, such dedicated perversity.

I wore navy blue in grade school, uniform color if not an actual uniform. Since it was a bad era for girls clothes, so much polyester, my mother made me a wool jumper (pinafore to the Brits). Unlike so many girls who were pushing on their sexual identities, I wanted mine long and full. I wanted to be covered, and in Detroit winters, warm. I wore that dark blue wool after school, not changing until I went to bed. But I grew that year, and then went to high school, where brown was the awful color, and I would wear pants for many years.

So many blue clothes, dark blue, royal blue, midnight blue. The first birthday for D that I could get him something (the actual first being the day we got home from activation from Saudi Arabia - that being gift enough) I asked him what he wanted. He mentioned that he needed a shirt, and hated buying clothes. I said fine, what kind of shirt would you like?

"Blue."

Um, ok. I found him a blue striped shirt, and he was happy. This was a man I could live my life with. Blue is such a real color for me, unpretentious, beyond fashion, comfortable. As is a man whose sole criteria for an article of clothing is that it be blue.