
Red team shirts: Grandma Gretchen “Gretch” Abraham, right, and her teammate Gussie Lester. Talk about power!
February is a month that seems to cry out for the color red. Smack in the middle of it is Valentine’s Day- -big red hearts everywhere you look!
One of our school colors is red.
Correct, 9. “Red and White Fight Fight!” as we used to scream from the Port Townsend High School bleachers. Later we moved on to blue and gold at Whitman College (at that time the Fighting Missionaries). To a chorus of disparaging comments from the rest of the family, forever proud Washington State University Cougars in crimson and gray, we finished our team colors career at the University of Washington. Purple, gold, and Huskies.
I don’t wear much red. I prefer blue and green.
I didn’t used to, Lily, but these days a few pieces reside in my wardrobe. When I was working as an accountant I would deliberately wear red and black on days I had a really tough meeting or project. It made me feel assertive- -fierce, even, in a take-no-prisoners kind of way.
Wow!
This week I started a new volume of my journal in a red spiral binder. I’ve been journaling since December 2018 and have never used that color before, stayed with dark blue the first couple of years before easing into green and even yellow. But red? I may be on the cusp of doing something wildly dramatic!
What a surprise.
Lily, give me a break! You’re the one who got us started on our drama-seeking path. Maybe I’m revved up by the prospect of creating a new Living History presentation as one of the Sisters of Providence?
They had a hospital didn’t they? I hope it doesn’t involve shots!
Not to worry, 9, the nun I have in mind was the Superior at Saint Vincent’s Academy, not Saint Mary’s Hospital. And, realistically speaking, the colors of that project will be black and white. Head to toe black and white.
Maybe I’ll be invited to a Clue party and dress as Miss Scarlet? Or maybe I’ll get some wild interior decorating idea that features lots of red?

A nice red tomato from my garden in years past. BLT, featuring beef pepper bacon from Butcher, Butcher and bread from Walla Walla Bread Company.
I don’t think it will happen in the garden, not even with the radishes (multi-colored “Easter Egg” variety) or the tomatoes (golden). Oh, I know, beets! The seed company was out of the golden ones so those will be red. And messy.
The color red represents love, passion and anger, so I’ve got plenty to work with. Maybe I’ll write about loads of that stuff in the new journal?
Good thing you write fiction.
It also represents strength, power, courage and danger. Maybe that’s why it was such an inspiring color in my accounting days.
Several years ago I was having a very difficult emotional struggle. I learned to calm myself by taking a deep breath, then looking around wherever I was for six red items and six blue items. This was almost always a possible task, which illustrates how dominant those colors are in our material world.
But red? Not my usual choice. Yet I did it on purpose, chose it from the other spiral bound notebooks on the store shelf. The subtle manifestation of a desire for change?
We shall see.