When I was little, I was brought up to be a girly girl. Pig tails and dresses were my norm. My parents had 4 boys before me, and I’m told my mother really wanted a girl. As the baby and the only girl in the family, I was dressed up and spoiled to a certain degree.
Right after my mom died, a dress was found hidden in her closet. It was believed she had bought it for me for my birthday a month earlier, but since she was in the hospital she wasn’t able to give it to me.
The dress was pink. Sleeveless with a little bolero jacket that had a fake fur (also pink) collar and the same fake fur pom poms on the end of the attached strings to tie the jacket shut.
I loved the dress. It was a dream dress for any little princess.
It was decided I should wear it to mom’s wake and funeral.
While my dress was a bright pink, the dress mom wore in her casket was a very light pale pink. Suddenly pink wasn’t fun anymore.
While my mom had loved the color, I began to loathe it.
Mom hadn’t worked outside the home. She didn’t drive. She wasn’t healthy and she often had to count on the assistance of others for things – grandma for rides, my cousin to watch us, dad to discipline us. Pink simply reminded me of these qualities that I didn’t like and didn’t want to have. For some pink means love, compassion, comfort. For me it was sadness, loss, death, weakness, illness and helplessness. The color that once had depicted me as a princess I had come to hate.
But things change.
The day I got the results from my mammogram saying they “found something”, my mind flashed on a little pink ribbon.
As I got closer to the date of my tomosynthesis, I noticed that ribbon and that color popping up more and more.
By the time they said I needed a biopsy, it was everywhere, taunting me. Places it had always been, but I had ignored it or just plain blocked it out.
This morning I sat writing this while waiting for my results to come in. Now I have them, and I have to wonder, just how good am I going to look wearing pink once again.
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