Primary Colors

Green.

Cool, lively, abundant, growing. Crisp and clean, like her smooth skin. The color of her eyes and of her temper.

Blue.

Bright sky, field trip days, really good music. The color of her hugs and of her imitating dance moves from Dancing With the Stars.

Yellow.

Pure fun and sun, laughter, goofy-ness. The color of her giggles and her endless Knock Knock jokes that are not funny but are because she loves them so.

Red.

All things fancy, all things special, fierce love. The way she grabs life by the, um, horns, dives right in and makes everyone she meets a fast friend. The color of her enthusiasm, her strength, her energy, her volume.

She is my primary color girl, my girl who can combine and create a million different colors from the palette at her disposal: she is sweet, exasperating, generous, mean, strong, fragile, hilarious, sharp, tiny and larger than life. She is the girl she draws over and over, filling up paper after paper, the happy one with the crazy hat that has flowers and sparks and rays of color shooting from its top. She is too little to be in school, but she is way too big to be anywhere else. She takes an extraordinary amount of grief, and still sees the world as one never-ending debutante ball: hers.

I look at her in complete amazement: this came from me? How the hell did that happen? Who is this wild child? What laws will she one day break with abandon? But really, where on earth did she come from?

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