Ginger HawthorneMy favorite color is purple. My favorite color is purple. That may sound simple, but for me, that revelation took 35 years of suffering and self discovery.
I grew up the youngest of four, and one of the things I learned very quickly was that each sibling had a color. My eldest sister had chosen red as her favorite, my brother chose blue, and my other sister chose yellow. A clear pattern emerged, and when you think about common groupings of four colors, the only one missing was green. So instead of choosing my own color, my parents assigned me green.
Because most of us got to choose our color, it was pretty normal for us to like things in that color. Pencils, folders, backpacks, etc. It became a bit of a running gag within the family, and I did my part to keep with the tradition. But Christmas took our colors to a whole new level.
Throughout the year, my mom would keep an eye out for anything that came in those four colors. She’d buy them, keep them tucked away all year, and on Christmas morning, after we were done with so the usual festivities, we’d open The Color Gifts. She’d set out four identical piles of gifts, one for each sibling. We’d take turns choosing a gift from the pile, everybody else would find their match (by size, shape and wrapping paper) and open them at the same time. We wouldn’t know what was inside, but we’d know what color it would be.
Oh, the things we would find inside. Tissues, cotton swabs, drinking straws, balloons, ping pong balls, light bulbs, deodorant, breakfast cereal, gum, pencils, rubber bands, bowls, cups, the list just went on and on. Every year, we’d spend half an hour or so opening up the most random assortment of things you could imagine. Sometimes all four colors came in one package, so she’d buy four, open them, swap the contents and repackage them so that each person only got their color.
And it was all green. Always green.
This lasted well into adulthood. I tried my best to like it, but at best I just didn’t care about the color green. During ice breakers at work or at camp, people would ask my favorite color, and I’d end up explaining the whole nonsense with these colors and how I ended up with green. It’s as close as I had to a favorite, but it never really struck a chord with me.
In my 30s, I started working at Heroku, which leaned pretty heavily into purple for its branding, inside and out. The product I worked on, the swag they’d hand out, our slides for presentations, even the Slack theme, all used shades of purple. For a while, I didn’t really care one way or another, but over the course of 6 years, it really started to grow on me.
I started looking forward to the swag. I liked putting slide decks together. I dig into the branding guidelines to learn more about which shades of purple they used. I started to really embrace the color, and it went beyond the company’s branding. I started seeking out purple clothes, purple pencils, purple decks of playing cards, just random little things.
It took over 35 years, but I had finally chosen a favorite color.
Naturally, I was excited to really lean in. I changed my desktop and phone wallpapers, found more clothes, and I even found some really bold purples to paint some of the walls in my new house. I told my mom about it, and her words sounded supportive, but her voice was much more confused about why I cared so much. I didn’t need her approval though, I was a grown adult and I finally had a favorite color!
That next Christmas, I was on pins and needles. There aren’t as many products that come in purple, especially alongside the rest of the sibling colors. I figured there’d be fewer gifts, or maybe we’d have to stop the color gifts altogether if my mom couldn’t find anything to make it work.
Most of you reading this can guess what happened. We still had color gifts, about the same number as always. And yes, everything was still green. My mom opted for what was convenient and familiar for her, and the tradition continued unchanged. But now, the wasn’t simply ambivalent; every green item felt like a punch to the gut. One of the rare silver linings to Covid was that I didn’t have to attend Christmas and deal with the color gifts anymore. My mom dropped them off on my porch, but at least I didn’t have to be a part of the ritual.
I love purple. All shades of purple, honestly. But for me, purple isn’t just a color. It’s the result of a lot of emotional and psychological work to finally come to something I can enjoy. It represents my independence from the expectations of my family, and by extension, other people in general. A lot of people learn that early on, but it took me a long time to get there. And my reward for that work is the color purple.