How blue the sky was the day the air smelled of hope, and not fear. 

I was raised on turquoise. It was my mother’s best color. Even in the hardest of times, she never went dark. Her blouse, her heart, remained in the color of hope. 

Perhaps the same racks that lured her in Dayton’s, led me as well to the colors of the Mediterranean. 

I painted Dominique in one of my first memories of him. Beside the water in Cassis. So far from home, I felt the familiar comfort, the joy, of every shade of blue. It’s no surprise then for me to paint the children in all of that hope.

Maybe it’s the promise of being raised in all of that blue, to keep rising. Daily. To look up and not be afraid. To find the hope in every sky, is to live in love. How beautifully blue.