Repeat After Me #5. テーマは、「色の記憶」。 ***** Recently, a couple of things happened that made me wonder if colors have the power to preserve people and memories. A little while ago, I was shopping with my younger sister, who is a doctor. We came across some colored pencils, and she casually told me something. She said, “When I make medical records after surgery, I use pink more than any other color. So my pink pencil always runs out first.” I am not a doctor, so I had never really thought about what colors doctors use in their daily work—or when they use them. But after hearing her story, I began to see pink a little differently. To me, pink was no longer simply a color associated with sweetness or cuteness. It was also the color of all the time my sister had spent caring for her patients, completing surgeries, and recording their progress afterward. So, for her birthday, I ordered a special set of colored pencils from overseas. The set contained twelve different shades of pink. There was bright pink, purplish pink, and deep rose. We call all of them “pink,” but when you place them side by side, you can see that each one is completely different. I may never fully understand the world that someone I love sees every day. But learning about a color she uses often allowed me to catch a small glimpse of her world. Something else happened recently that also made me think about color. I had the chance to go painting with a friend. As I wondered what to paint, I decided to recreate a scene that had stayed with me from my time in the Philippines. There was a day when I visited the island where my Filipina friend grew up. We had a picnic by the sea. Then, at her family home, we were taught how to make banana chips, and we made them together. Afterward, I took a short nap. When I woke up, I looked up at the sky and saw palm trees reaching into it. It was not a famous tourist attraction. Still, for some reason, the sky I saw that day stayed with me. I had not painted in a long time, and the finished painting was certainly not a masterpiece. But as I mixed the paints, I managed to create a shade of blue that made me think, “Yes. This is the color of the sky in the Philippines.” At that moment, I felt a little proud. And, for some reason, I also felt relieved. I used to look up at the sky in my daily life in the Philippines. Recreating the color of the sky felt like proof that I had not lost that memory. We cannot remember every experience in words. We gradually forget the conversations we had and the small details of each day. And yet, without us even realizing it, certain colors remain in our hearts. There may be a shade of pink that reminds us of someone, or a shade of blue that takes us back to a particular place. Perhaps colors are small keys that unlock our memories. How about you? Is there a color that reminds you of a person, a place, or a moment in your life? *****
