Remember the bulbs I ordered in August? The last allotment finally turned up. I have to say I'm not terribly pleased with Van Bourgondien because not only did I only just now get the last of the 200 bulbs, but the substitutions they gave me don't work at all with my color scheme. If you'll recall, I had plans for a white to yellow to apricot to deep orange scheme. Alas, the William and Mary tulips did not arrive. Instead, I got something called Christmas Marvel. Annoyingly, there's nothing by that name listed on the Van Bourgondien web site, nor is there any indication of height or color on the tag. If you think I'm going to plant unknown tulips in among my carefully planned containers, forget it. They'll have to go out in the yard somewhere on the far side of the patio.
You know what color they'll turn out to be, of course. Pink. No matter what I do, I always wind up with pink flowers. Pink is the bane of my existence. My mom used to make me wear it despite my decided preference for muted earth tones, and now nurseries betray me with pink ixia and pink astilbe and I'm absolutely positive Christmas Marvel won't turn out to be red and green if you follow my drift.
Come to think of it, I can't remember why I didn't just put down my foot and demand my mother buy the clothes I liked. Isn't that what youngsters are supposed to do? I was the oldest in the family, and I've been bossy all my life, but I never defied my mother in terms of clothing. I guess I figured that since she always looked totally stylish her taste must be better than mine, grubby tomboy that I was. And so I donned pinks and yellows and frills and giant patterns, year after year, always looking like the biggest dork on the planet. It didn't help that I had to wear my skirts two inches longer than the other girls, and I wasn't allowed to wear makeup or shave my legs, and I got rolls of thick, cotton knee highs every year for Christmas. My mom liked the way I looked. That was good enough for me.
Until I got to school. Then I'd duck into the restroom, and roll up my skirts, and substitute stockings for knee highs, and put on blue eyeshadow and shiny Bonnie Bell lip gloss. I kept the stuff in my locker. But no amount of rolling and tucking could hide the fact that yellow made me look ill, and huge patterns made me look fat, and blue eyeshadow looked monumentally silly, not sophisticated. So no matter how I tried, I always looked like a nerd. And I hated that. I was the sort of girl who died a thousand deaths if she was wearing the wrong color socks with her outfit. It would prey on my mind all day, the perceived disharmony of colors setting off some sort of jangled signal in my brain, and I'd be absolutely certain the popular girls were sneering at me in secret. Granted, teenagers are pretty jangled and paranoid to begin with. My color sensitivity just exacerbated the problem.
Towards the end of high school my mom discovered color charting, a method of color analysis in which your skin, hair, and eye color is taken into account and a palette assigned to your "season." My mother was pronounced a Winter. My sister was a Spring. To their dismay, I didn't slot neatly into a particular season. My mom decided I was probably a Summer, although I could wear some Spring colors -- like pink.
"I think I'm an Autumn," I said, looking at the soft greens, browns, and russets. Oh, no, no, no. I didn't have the right hair color, or eyes, and my skin tone was all wrong. "But I like all the Autumn colors, they look good on me," I said rebelliously. Sorry, according to the received wisdom I was not allowed to be an Autumn. That was the last straw. I loathed the Spring and Summer colors. Lemon yellow and Kelly green? Oh, no, no, no. There was much in the way of teenaged muttering, long-suffering gusty sighs, and tearful rushing up to one's room.
"If you don't like my choices, buy your own clothes," my mother said incautiously.
Poor mom. She had to watch me wear some odd combinations: platform shoes, a gigantic navy peacoat, sparkling pale blue bodysuit, and paint-spattered carpenter pants were one favorite outfit. I tried every style possible and discarded most of them after a few months. I went through a black-only period once I moved to San Francisco. I discovered I didn't actually like musty old thrift shop clothes even though they were supposed to be cool. I eventually admitted to myself that I really wanted to wear expensive, classic clothes. With the advent of decent employment I started buying good pieces in subtle, flattering earth tones. Were you to peek inside my closet today you'd see hanger after hanger of clothing in shades of olive, slate blue, bitter orange, chocolate, pearl grey, champagne, black, navy, pistachio, and old gold. The closest I come to pink is a rich burgundy. Everything goes with everything else, or a large percentage of it. The shapes are fairly conservative, though I like items that display a bit of personality in the details. I have items I've worn for 15 years that still look suitable today.
And I never wear the wrong socks any more. So don't think you can fool me by sending me mystery tulips, Van Bourgondien. I can spot an attempt to foist pink on me even now. It's like radar. To the back of the closet you go. I mean garden.
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