Once there was a child who swallowed colors. I don’t mean it ate a broccoli stem and turned green. I mean, this child really gulped colors, and they became part of it. The first color the child tasted was pink. The pink of the sun rising in the east. A pink that starts grey, then brightens and almost looks blue or orange, but definitely becomes pink just as the first bird wakes up. This pink was the first color. The child saw on the day it was born when held up toward the east. It opened its eyes and mouth, and instead of crying like other children do when they are born, it sighed deeply and swallowed a big mouthful of the sky. The sky loved the child, and the child loved the sky, so they joined together to become one. Later that day, the sky showed the child one of its favorite colors, blue. Not just any blue. A blue you don’t know is blue at first. A dark warm blue that comes slowly and silently. A blue so dark it almost doesn’t seem blue. Some mistake it for black, this blue of the sky, once the first star shows itself. The blue tasted and felt different when the child swallowed it than the pink, but again, the child joined with the sky and became blue too. As the child started to crawl, it licked, tasted, and gulped new colors, but it kept that first pink and blue inside in a very special place. So it knew where to find them, feel them, and taste them when it couldn’t see the sky. Soon, the child was walking. The sky kept showing it more and more colors, and it gobbled them as fast as it saw them. The child assumed that everyone could taste and swallow colors because it did so all the time. It knew that there were colors and everything. Have you ever tasted these different shades of green? The waxy green of cacti, the bitter green of pine needles, and the very special yellow green of a caterpillar. Or, for that matter, the different flavors of orange that zinnias, carrots, and crayons have. Well, the child did. It savored, knew them, and became them all. Early one, especially pink morning, the kind of grey blue orange pink that made the child sigh and smile, and want to savor its taste for as long as it could, the child was given a box of crayons- twelve crayons-and told that was all the colors there were. So the child dumped the box of crayons on the floor and started to mix the colors. It mixed red and orange. The blue with the purple. The green with the brown, the yellow, and the black. And then I grabbed them all in both hands and stirred and scribbled and ate a quick tiny bite. But someone saw and started to laugh. Then everyone started to laugh. The child tried to hide, but its colors were there on the floor.
I was and am that child. I now have the words to identify as a spiritual being living in a body that finds magic in colors, taste, and sounds. To me, art is magic, and magic is art. I enjoy using my hands, my eyes, and my heart to create beauty. The mediums I use to express myself, most recently, have been playing with textures and colors in a community garden, making masks as a metaphor, and creating drums from rawhide and wood.
What does this have to do with gender affirming care or gender at all? My sense of self and how I adorn or manipulate my body should be my choice. I see being able to ask doctors and therapists to help me with that manipulation is no different than any other person going to a hairstylist or a nail salon to make themselves comfortable. I have long since stopped trying to fit in. I know I am working with what gives me joy and how I can belong to myself and to something greater than me.
