Sky Blue Pink

My Mom called it Sky Blue Pink. And I would laugh. I always thought that she was so funny calling it that, especially as I got to be teen age. You know how that goes; you need to have everything be "real" -like when you were drawing---it had to look like what it was , and most often your skills were woefully lacking. And you needed to have your mother know what was real too. And what was real was always dependent on your definition. So to have mom say that the sky was Sky Blue Pink was as ridiculous as saying the sky was falling.


But this afternoon late , when I looked up into the sky, my first thought was that the sky was -yes- Sky Blue Pink. It's that quickly melting sunset sky when at first the sky is as blue as it can be , and the sun having dipped just low enough casts a warm glow under the clouds. The clouds shift and dissipate and the colors seem to melt into each other. Watching it makes you want to hold your breath and hold the day in stasis just as it is. Then so imperceptibly you make a small groan as the colors meld and fade to night. And the realization hits again that Mom couldn't have said it better ; Sky Blue Pink.


That kind of celestial inspiration , I imagine, motivates artists , and poets & musicians to create all manner of wondrous and creative canvases, poems and songs. The desire to capture such small and seemingly perfect moments gives rise to some acts of beauty and creativity. But what of the population not so creatively endowed? How does one express that kind of beauty and hold on to it? Some devise descriptive little ditties for their kids ,like Mom did. Then others try to hold on to it by injecting their translation into their environment. Witness:

This, my friends, is the legacy that the Mister & I have been given . I'm slightly embarrassed to show you , so I tried to find discrete corners of our narrow little bathroom to share with you. I'm afraid that the colors of the photo are slightly off , but not too much so. But there it is......someone's interpretation of Sky Blue Pink.

You can see just a wee bit of the dusty pink sink to the lower left corner, set into brownish pink laminate against sky blue tiles. Oh my ! And the tiles wrap ALL around the dusty pink tub and beyond. Oh my. I wonder , whatever were they thinking ?

This is original to the house , which we've guessed to be about 50 years old. ( I was just a wee small lass back then and don't rightly recall what was considered fashionable back then . But could it really have been this sky blue pink?) Now the Mister and I have slowly , ever so slowly, been working on upgrading bits and pieces and parts on and around the house. We've a bit more to do. This will probably be our last project and I'm simultaneously dying to do it and dreading doing it.

In an effort just to make the room a bit more comfortable to live with in the interim ( a l-o-n-g interim it is ) we have painted most of the wall space white -as white as we could get it ( The sweet little room is also north facing. brrrrrr ). And out of my stash , I pulled a few vintage hankies of , what else, pink and blue and white, to use as a window valance.

What can I tell you. They are almost the only things , aside from my milk glass which I have everywhere in the bathroom ( the more white , the better ) that give me reason to smile while I'm in there.

Oh I DO yearn for the day that we can haul those tiles and that tub and sink out of there. Until then I will "grace" ( ha ) the room with my little hankies , and gaze out the window to watch that Sky Blue Pink sky melt into night.

Wishing you all tender, melting moments of your own.