My maiden name is Gray. I sign my name Tamara Gray Belanger, it’s on my driver’s license, my passport, my everything official. I have kept it as part of who I am as a whole. This week my students and I were talking about the process of building a house. We explored the foundation and how that applies to our lives having a kind of foundation that we are always building on. Foundations are poured out with unset cement the color of gray, ready to become solidified, supportive. It feels like a sure thing.
Life starts to happen as soon as we scream our way into it, whether we’re ready or not. I’ve often wondered what it feels like to be born. Something called hands pulls you out and up into something loud and bright and not at all comforting. You weren’t prepared, no way to gather your things; i.e. umbilical cord. I’ve experienced adopting two children, created and born in completely different countries. Each of them had heard a voice for months from inside their safe space and then birth happened and the familiar voice disappeared. The foundation shifted a bit and they each lived for more than a year in the outside world . Then suddenly, a stranger of a different color, different sounds coming out of my mouth, weirdly round eyes, walked in and picked them up and took them away from everything they thought they knew. Everything they thought they knew. Everything. It’s another birth all over again. And yet again, the foundation trembled.
Living can feel like the trees are sleeping for far too long in winter. You need that leaf to bud and you need it now. You take the hits and the losses. The people you love leave, or die, or disappoint and you can’t decide which is worse. The money stacks up but somehow it doesn’t make you feel like you thought it would or money runs out like water and now all you can think of is money. Change becomes the enemy just around the corner and you fear the sound of its’ feet heading your way. And then the thing you longed for, waited for, planned for happens and you forget the sound of those menacing footsteps. All the birds sing, all the flowers bloom and life is pure sunshine. Until it isn’t. It’s a fast motion fade and dawn and fade again, You think you see the foundation move and you struggle to find where to stand.
Take your flashlight and go outside in the dark. Point it to where your house rests. Do you see it? The foundation? It’s still there. There are cracks and it’s possible it has shifted, wildly or almost imperceptibly. But it remains and you almost want to hug your house. Good job, house, for remaining where they put you. Good work, foundation, for staying. For staying. But it’s gray.
The sun starts to come up and maybe you do a thing. You go to the shed, the garage, wherever you store the hammer and the nails, and you find a leftover can of paint. Hopefully it’s yellow or powdery blue, maybe it’s new leaf green or hopeful soft pink. Maybe you bring two colors with you. Get a small brush, because life is painted in small strokes, one. at. a. time. Go find a corner on the back of your house, somewhere where the aesthetic you’ve worked so hard to achieve is not “ruined”. Open the paint can and stir until it’s the color it was first created to be. Then dare to do it. Dip the brush in and put it on the gray foundation. It looks silly, childlike, completely out of place. Do it anyway. No one will see it….unless they go to the fartherest corner of your foundation and look for it.
As the sun rises full on it will dry the color and illuminate it. The rain will eventually come but it will be okay because the paint will be ready. It’s part of the foundation now. The foundation hasn’t changed. It’s just colorful now.
This is what I know. I have learned to take the Gray that I am and splash color all over the foundation that I stand on. And on rainy days when the sky weeps? I pull my audacious out of my pocket, bring an umbrella, and sling color everywhere. It turns out, when rain hits the colors they dissolve and blend into one another. Ah friends, don’t waste time. Live hard and out loud. Say I’m sorry. Say I love you. Cry openly when it’s sad. Cry openly when it’s beautiful. Risk safe for bold. Put your hands in paint and leave a colorful handprint when you hug your friends.
But first? Color your foundation and then trust it. My Foundation is my Creator. He made me Gray. He surprises me, confounds me, scares me sometimes. I’ve hidden from Him, run from Him, run to Him. I’ve shifted my own house and caused cracks to form. I’ve had my house shake, rattle and burn, literally, from life and it’s tricks. I’ve been sure it’s been one too many times to stand. But stand it does.
And colorful, it is. Jagged, imperfect, messy. But colorful. <3
Beautiful writing. You have captured it perfectly. And again, I know you deeper still…I love and miss you, my friend.