Looking for Yellow

My favorite color is yellow.  It’s an odd color to have as a favorite color.  Most people like colors that look good on them – yellow only looks good on people with dark complexions, certainly not me.  Or they like colors that look good on things that are important to them – cars, houses, etc.  Quite frankly, that would be a bit too much yellow for my taste.  So I find myself wondering what it is about yellow that makes it appeal to me so much.  The color always catches my eye.  I find if given a crayon box and asked to pick a color at random, I will always choose lemon yellow.  If I’m picking out flowers, yellow is always my preference.  Game pieces, mini-golf golf balls, croquet balls, bocce balls, fondue fork, etc. – you guessed it!  I ALWAYS want to have yellow, but why?

Yesterday while sitting at my kitchen table looking out the window at the snow-covered yard, with the gray sky, swollen stream, and snow-covered woods in the background, I figured it out.  This has always been my least favorite time of the year.  People are done with winter, but winter just isn’t quite done with them!  It’s a time of longing for warmth, bright colors, and sunshine.  Because of that longing, I believe it is a time when people tend to be in their lowest moods of the year.  Everyone is tired of dirty snow that just won’t melt, needing to wear several layers just to leave the house, not seeing friends and neighbors as often because everyone is still hibernating.  For me, at this time of year, my heart yearns for signs that winter is over and the change of seasons is truly on it’s way – and yesterday, looking out my window, I saw that sign.

As I looked out the window toward the river a splash of yellow caught my eye.   There was a male goldfinch sitting on the feeder and he had started to change from his drab, winter olive to his bright, cheerful, summertime yellow.  What a difference that small spot of yellow made in the view outside my window - and my mood.  All of a sudden the gray sky, white snow, brown trees and all the other colors of winter were diminished by that small amount of cheerful color.  It was then that I realized that yellow is the color that most represents the end of winter to me.  Soon the yellow daffodils will be up, too.  When they come up, it’s a pretty sure sign that winter is over. (Yes the crocuses come up first, but with them there is always a chance we can still get more snow, and besides - they are typically white and purple anyway.)  So, now I know why I love yellow.  It is the harbinger color of spring!

I think next year I am going to buy a huge box of lemon yellow crayons and make custom wrappers that say something like, “Be Happy!  Spring is almost here!! The goldfinches are turning yellow.”  Whenever I see somebody in a particularly bad mood during March, I’m going to walk up to them and hand them a cheerful yellow crayon.  I wonder if it will make them pause, smile, and cheer up a little or if they’ll just end up angrily throwing the cheerful yellow crayon at me as I walk away.  Hmmmm, I guess I’ll have to invest in a cheerful yellow helmet to go with my cheerful yellow crayons . . . just in case!