the big box of crayons

when i was little, my favorite aunt had a special box of crayons she kept for me and my sister. when we went to her house, she would go into the attic (a place of great mystery, because the stairs to it were in the back of a clothes closet that i remember being behind the television set--though surely that can't be right). she'd come down the attic steps and emerge through the clothes with the box, a flat box like the box "candyland" came in. the box smelled of sanctity-- dust and wax. the sacred smell of crayons. (remember that?) when she opened the box, the colors were laid out like silverware on a banquet table. it created quite an appetite to draw. the box held 100 crayons, each one resonating a pure note of color.

in kindergarten we had a box of 5 colors. i rememeber because i was the only kid who brought mine home, the last day of school, without a single crayon broken. to me a broken crayon was tragedy, like baby birds fallen from a nest. no prayer or effort could bring them back. (my first taste of disappointment, i imagine.)

our aunt's legion of crayons offered infinite possibility: draw within the lines, or rebelliously outside them. scribble, scrawl, deface, create. what paper or surface could fail to be beautiful with such a spectrum afforded to it? there i learned the metals: not only gold and silver (how pedestrian they seemed!), but copper but bronze, pewter. perhaps this isn't a real memory, but i can see a platinum crayon. can that have happened? platinum? crayola, stand aside. in the crayon parade, you must bow to this box from my aunt's attic.

it broke my heart when i learned she let cousins share this treasure when they visited. oh, fickle aunt. after learning that, when the box was opened i'd jealously inventory the colors- see which shades had been lost or broken by the yahoos from the other side of the family. but in truth they did pretty well. i think like my sister and i, they were awed by the colors.

the norm, of course, was the crayola 64 set. it was pretty good. no complaints, under usual circumstances. i remember clearly the difference between yellow-orange and orange-yellow, like two brothers similar looking and yet distinct.

"get to the point, cupcake!" i hear an impatient reader sigh.

yes, friend, i shall. i wonder what crayon you would be. your impatience speaks of red, brick red,i think. and assessing that has brought me to my point.

meeting people is like coloring. they provide the shape. we try to match our understanding with what we know of them. we color sponge bob yellow because we know he is yellow; marge simpson's hair is blue because we know it is blue. our acquaintances we adorn with the 5-color kindergarten box. the 64 box we keep for our closest friends. in between, the 12, the 24, stages of intimacy that offer more dimensions to knowing people.

but sometimes i wonder about the colors we do not see. a co-worker lies about something to make me look bad. who would have guessed she carried that shade in her? a neighbor glows unexpectedly with an exotic hue i never guessed. people i meet in life or cyberspace show up sometimes like a technicolor movie seen on a black and white tv. i want the hundred crayons back, for some of them. i want to know the possibilities, the range, the nuance of refraction. i want to hold out the box and match the colors to the person's soul, discovering in each aspect a richness that defies the mundane, the 64-ishness of the daily world.

in heaven there are colors we can only imagine. i see them sometimes, flashes of the divine, in people i know or want to know. and it's like my aunt presenting the unopened box of colors. i want to inhale, to grab a stick and find the picture that i know is there.