11 Shades of Red

1. Tomatoes. When I see them on display at the farmer’s market, I can’t

help but think about how many hands have touched them -- planted them,

pruned them, tended them, picked them, loaded them gently into crates to

be driven for hours through the Central Valley in the pre-dawn light, to make

it easier for me to enjoy then. How many hands it took to erect the tables

and tents, and to make the labels that tell us their names: Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Green Zebra, Early Girl.

2. Downey Woodpecker, with its bright red crown, tapping at the roof

with a rat-a-tat-tat. He is testing me, I think, trying to figure out how much

patience remains. Precious little.

3. Roses. Cliché, I know, but there they are, blooming in the backyard. Beckoning us to notice them through the window as we do the dishes – or even better, to go outside and bury our noses in their scent. Isn’t that what they say life is all about?

4. Valentine’s Day, 2003. In celebration, I decide to prepare a dinner for my husband consisting entirely of red foods: Beet salad, seared ahi, raspberry sorbet, pinto noir. Nine months later, my son Alex is born.

5. The love muscle that fills with blood. My father has had a heart attack and lays unconscious in an ICU bed in a sterile, fluorescently lit room chilled to barely sixty degrees. A variety of wires and cords attach him to several monitors that tell

us what it happening inside his body. One shows his heart as a thin white line that spikes upon each beat, I know him better than that. A few months later, my 3 year old son asks his pre-school teacher about the love muscle that fills with blood and why they sometimes have to shock it to make it work. Alarmed, she fills out a CPS form, and we are called in to speak with the Director.

6. Raw meat. While visiting my brother’s ranch in Colorado, I learn the names of his West Highland red cattle: Brodgar, Angus, Amber, Penny. A few days later, I find myself staring at a massive steak in the glass deli case of an upscale market. I am mesmerized by how it is streaked with veins of red and white – marbleized, they call it – and wonder if my own fat and muscle look the same

under my skin. It seems a perfect visual

metaphor for my experience of Colorado, a

swirling mix of longing, nostalgia, relief and

sadness, all entwined together.

7. Gingham tablecloth. Spread out over a wooden picnic table at Buffalo Overlook State Park, right off the freeway. My mother laying everything out in rows: Paper plates piled high with sticky watermelon, cardboard buckets filled with Kentucky Fried Chicken, bags of potato chips, a cherry piece in a cardboard box, to keep away the ants, a bright red cooler filled with ice and

cans of cold pop. Waiting for the guests to arrive.

8. Red Rocks, 1985. I am sitting in a natural amphitheater made of eroded sandstone streaked with iron ore, waiting to see Stevie Ray Vaughn take the stage. But the clouds are gathering ominously, and there are enormous bolts of lightning to the east. When they finally start to break right over us, there is no place to hide.

9. Muladhara. Also known as The Root Chakra, red as a beet, located right at the perineum for men, the cervix for women. The realm of safety, security, belonging. Having one’s basic needs met, so that one can function. The foundational level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Mine needs to be pried back open with a can opener.

10. Hot lava. Spewing out of the side of Kilauea. Impossible to contain A vast lake of molten rock rising and falling with the Earth’s breath. Waiting until enough pressure builds up to explode outward.

11. Anger. Searing and hot, lighting me on fire from within. Taking over my field of vision, blinding me with its intensity. Blood pumping in my ears, bile rising in my throat. Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish it from pain. The deeper the cut, the slower it bleeds