Things she’d, finally understood, about her own childhood, through looking back in time, translated…
Born toward the end of winter, growing up, my favorite color was brown. The reason for it was from the beginning, my mother loved wearing brown clothes, and I’d often shopped around with her, and naturally, I’d, shifted my gaze alongside hers, toward that least noticeable color. It was, unnoticeable, so lowkey, and, my mother told me, that this, is flair. Second reason was my hair color, I’d had light colored hair since I was a child, and in the sun, it’d, had that golden glow to it, I was, a yellow haired girl growing up, and, although as I got older, my hair color darkened, but it wasn’t completely black, and, during that era where the school cared about the hairs, I’d often gotten called in by the disciplinary official of my school.
I lived next to the mountains, and in the summers and winters, I’d often, tagged along my older brother to catch the bugs in the hills. He ignored me, and just, ran up ahead, and, I’d often gotten lost in the mountains, but getting lost wasn’t scary (I’d only needed to climb back down then I was home), the scariest part was being left. Back then, the huge trees that surrounded me felt more like companions to me, I’d, imagined, that I could, hear and understand their words.
Although the memories of my childhood were all very clear, but, that sense of loss that I’d felt from getting deserted by my older brother in the mountains, in the two-day “family constellation” seminars, through watching on the sidelines, I’d, experienced it, all over again. Family constellation was a term, coined by the German psychotherapist, Hellinger, through understanding the families’ subconscious energies, and moving the energies into the consciousness, to find the obstructions that’s happened, and readjust, to re-place oneself, into the right position in one’s own life. The method used was using a stranger, as members of our families, to set up the members, standing in that space, to show how the members of one’s family interacted, including positions, statures, behaviors, distances, along with an assortment of psychological distances.
In my two experiences, although two members of my group had, represented the me when I was younger, but, there’s, that coincidental shared behavioral pattern: at first I was wild and curious, but quickly, I’d shown that strong sense of loneliness, and longing, for somebody I can play with. At first, I’d stayed hidden far away, looking at the classmate who’d represented me, until she’d showed her upset, in not finding someone to play with, squatted down onto the ground, kept her head lowered for a long while, then, I’d, finally, worked up the courage, walked towards her, said, “What, would you like to play?”, she’d, lifted her head, looked into my eyes, and, our tears fell, almost at the same time. I’d, finally, found my own, playmate in childhood, turns out, I was, my own best childhood playmate growing up. And that was when I’d finally recalled, that my favorite color when I was young was actually, not pink, nor blue, but the color that people felt was old, brown. I’d made amends with my own childhood. That sense of abandonment kept following me as I got older, without me realizing, and now, I’d needed to, learn to, cope with it.
Or maybe, there’s, one other reason why I loved the color brown so. All the brown foods were all, delicious, the brown sugar traditional Chinese buns, chocolate, caramel, cookies, almonds, whole-wheat breads, those were, my favorites. The brown colored animals, all very warm too, the Teddy Bear, the brown dog. Brown paper bag had always been my favorite kind of paper product………………two, three decades are, a long time, but, we’d changed, less than, we imagined we had.
“A Book of Colour” said, “Brown is a darker kind of yellow. Although the denseness of orange and brown are different, but they’d shared, the same wavelength on the light spectrum. Brown is made with black and any other color.” We’d, accumulated the experiences of our lives, bit by bit, turning it into black, then, all we needed, was to add some other colors, maybe, blue, or passionate red, or the innocent yellow, slowly, they’d all, disappeared, into the black, and becoming, that lowkey brown. I’m thinking, that what my mom talked about, the “flair” was the process of this becoming.
So, you’d, finally realized about yourselves, and took care of your own loneliness as a young child, because you’re a grown up now, and although there wasn’t anything you could’ve done as a child, to ward off your own loneliness back then, you can now, embrace that lonely child within you, and accompany her, and be her, best friends, and that, is how, you were able to, resolve that childhood issue of feeling lonely a lot.