Finding my daughter in a melancholy mood one afternoon and finding nothing that would satisfy her or bring her out of her black cloud, I asked one last time what could possibly be the matter. She finally huffed and broke out with a tearful story of how a friend had told her super top secret, secret that she liked a boy in her class (primary school – BRUTAL!). Not wanting to make light of it and remembering a few of my own elementary tragedies, I tried to rush to the rescue with some life altering advice. I came up with nothing. “Just ignore her” was about the only words of wisdom flashing in my mind. But try giving a second grader this advice and…GOOD LUCK.
Yellow is not my favorite color. (Nothing personal – I love most all colors. But yellow had just never been on the upper level of my list.) Today, ironically, I found it lending its beauty to my use. “Sweetie, sometimes you just have to look for the yellow in things.” OK–I've probably heard that in some movie somewhere, right? And if I had not heard it somewhere else before – what was I thinking!? How in the world was I going to explain my way out of this verbage! Oh well – it worked! I explained that, let’s face it – sometimes people are just jerks. They are going to let you down or disappoint you (we’ve all been on the receiving end, if not the giving, at times). You can’t control what others say, only how you react. (Not anything new to any of you, but to a 2nd grader – it was is as if I were a sage.) I continued...when life stinks, you just have to look for something good, something “yellow”. Yellow is the color of a beautiful flower, the sun, a cute little baby chick - lots of pretty things. Ok, I’m not a poet or heart warming prose writer, but it was enough to get us through this episode and onto the next.
We still occasionally remind one another to “look for the yellow”. Yes, on those days when life stinks – look around to find your yellow (sometimes, you may have to look extra hard, but I hope you’ll find it).
