The grays of January have taken over the world
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- January 14, 2024
- 1413
The snow is turning to rain outside my darkened window this morning. The grayness suits my mood, and I need a cardigan just to warm up even though warm air purrs through the vent on the floor beside me.
The house feels echoey, and all the pictures have been taken down and stacked. The walls jut their surfaces out proudly, stark, vast. It’s beginning to feel like a graveyard of boxes in here as we maneuver around what we surrounded ourselves with.
The other morning I was disoriented walking into my kitchen as I had taken down the strand of lights that always illuminates the top of the cupboard. I could walk through this house blindfolded and make coffee, but for a moment, I felt for purchase, wobbly, and knew the breaking away had begun.
“Oh, just wait for the fresh feeling of a new space. It’s so good for our brains as we age, Missy!” a friend said.
And yes, I know it will feel good once I figure out where to sit and drink my coffee in darkness, what spot my mug will steam into curling vapor, once the hulking shapes of our furniture become known to me in their new arrangement, once Tina (my cat) greets me in the predawn kitchen and we find our way together.
The grayness wraps itself around me like the scalding water I fill my bathtub with. It has to be so hot I can barely tolerate its depth. Sometimes we have to go to depths we didn’t think we could manage.
I thrive under gray skies, but as the days compile into years, the cold feels a bit more biting. My fingers chill, and I know I’d be the first one to go if my plane ever crashed in the Andes.
We had just watched “Society of the Snow” on Netflix, a new — absolutely gorgeous — retelling of that famous plane crash and a team that survived brutal cold for months in those treacherous mountains. After a cold day last week, I told George I’d be the first to go after walking to the car without gloves on. I shivered as I turned the heat on full blast.
We’re working on things at the new house that went from small to not small in short order — joists and walls and vintage bathtubs in a little crooked house. I’ve never not lived in a crooked house, even in the house I grew up in. It’s always off an inch, and my husband is the lifeline that makes it work every time. He can put you up a cupboard you’ll never know was adjusted for the crazy angle of the house. Do not doubt him and his skill because it is vast. If there isn’t a way to get it done, he will have already found a solution and be working on it.
I’ve been packing and sorting and wrapping at home while he blazes a hot trail from this house to that one. Very soon it’ll be my turn there. Coatings will go on the walls, and a soft black will envelop the brick fireplace and shelves that were painted a gray that doesn’t suit me.
I am done with gray and all her varying shades. I like a gray day but not a gray house, anymore at least. Most of the walls in the home we’re moving from are a varying shade of deep gray, and I’ve loved that color here, but I’m zipping myself out of that dress, those soft grays that took over the world, or at least the world Joanna Gaines lives in. I need deep greens and vibrant shades of coral or rust. I need something new and exciting. I need a contrast to the grays of life.
Melissa Herrera is a published author and opinion columnist. She is a curator of vintage mugs and all things spooky, and her book, “TOÑO LIVES,” can be found at www.tinyurl.com/Tonolives. For inquiries, to purchase her book or anything else on your mind, email her at junkbabe68@gmail.com or find her in the thrift aisles.