Illumination

L. visited me this weekend, and with her visit, she brought an interesting thing to my attention. The reasoning behind this blog's title may be an absolute mystery to several of my readers. (I'm not sure how many of these I have, but as I live most of my life outside of my city, it's not an unreasonable assumption that many of you don't occupy the same city or even region as I do.) Allow me to explain.
My house is magenta. It has been for almost four years now. I have found that one of the first questions I get asked is, "Whose idea was that?" and it's always pleasurable to respond, "My dad's." My father has a pink shirt that he saves for his court dates. He has pink socks with white polka dots that he wears to work. And it was he who first suggested, on that spring evening so long ago, that we repaint our house pink.
I remember it well. We were finishing dinner (a rare occurrence; this was back when we still tried to have family dinners every night, even though I had dance classes during normal dinner hours) and Easter had just passed, so Caroline and I were having some leftover Easter chocolate for dessert. My father reached over and picked up the box my granparents had sent, that housed a chocolate bunny.
"Just this shade," he said. "It would be great! A very classic Victorian color."
My mother pursed her lips and gave him a cold look that stopped just short of being Sicilian. Undaunted, my father continued.
"We could do the trimmings in this," he said, holding up another chocolate box. This one was purple. He stacked them on top of each other. "They complement each other beautifully."
I don't remember how we convinced my mother, but somehow we did! That summer, a group of somewhat sullen painters dangled outside our house at all hours, doing their best to avoid splashing pink onto their clothes. The crowning glory of the paint job was the discovery that not only was our house vividly pink and painted with latex paint that would not fade, it also reflected off our neighbor's white house. On very bright afternoons, the sun bounces back into the dining room, so that everyone is bathed in a flattering rosy glow. There we sit, listening to Bob Dylan and enjoying our magenta house and all its accompanying perks.