You know how when you have a story and you think it’s really interesting, but it turns out it’s only interesting to you? I have one of those stories. It’s one that has a lot of emotion, but it’s all personal emotion and no one would get it but the storyteller.
I was driving on the highway one afternoon with my new sunglasses. The sunglasses were polarized, which is good stuff. But if you’ve had polarized glasses before, you know that when you’re looking through them and looking through another tinted window, you can see a rainbow effect. Usually I see green and purple rainbows through my car’s tinted windows.
This day, I was looking for the rainbows and they weren’t there. I was disappointed. Then the sun shifted and I saw them clearly. Unlike the usual green/purple tints, I saw a full rainbow of colors and my eye kept coming back over and over to focus in on one specific shade of blue in the spectrum. As I focused on this color, some feeling started growing in me.
It was a weird feeling that I couldn’t describe. It was like when you smell a familiar smell and it makes you recall a memory clearly, but with this visual memory stimuli, it was harder to place. It was a sense of comfort and happiness. It was something not recent, a feeling I hadn’t had in a very long time. After many, many glances at the wonderful shade of blue and trying to let it tell me what it was from, the memory formed – a most unexpected childhood memory.
The blue color was reminding me of Easter colors, specifically, colored Easter eggs. My memories were of Easter time with my family – decorating eggs, getting a basket of candy, and going to the Easter brunches. I’m not very big on family gatherings anymore and haven’t been for a very long time, so this memory precedes my disconnection from family and family events. That means it was a period of true childhood innocence for me. That feeling has been gone for a very long time and I felt a little melancholy that I couldn’t have that anymore.
I basked in the memory as long as I could. Once the feeling was identified and the visual scenes were recalled, reality started setting in and the wonder started to wane. My inner adult took over and analyzed the whole situation. I realized I was tapping in to my childhood innocence by remembering and somewhat reliving the memory, but that was only a one-time experience. I was unable to play it back again with the same emotions. Like watching a movie where you know what’s coming next. The feeling grew more and more distant.
Then it all passed and I was alone and driving again.
Comments are closed.