There is a color of light that calls to me. I don’t see it very often anymore, but when I do it is usually through the window of some place at night. It is that bright yellow incandescence that could be so stark and awful. It can speak of poverty and bare bulbs, of basement lights and strictly utilitarian lights.
As a child it was the light that hung above our back landing welcoming our family home from long vacations, or late night excursions, a harbinger of love and safety and togetherness.
At school it lit up the hallways after band contests when we scurried out to find our parents waiting for us outside under the big greenish lights in the school driveway.
At my grandmother’s big house it was the kitchen light, a bright bulb creating an island of warmth above the old oak table, a place to make strawberry sodas and giggle over spending the night.
In my first apartment it was the first thing I wanted to cover up. I went out and bought a cheap plastic shade to disguise it, a round orange ball of a shade with fake cut away trim on the outside. I just screwed the bulb in and it held the whole thing above my head on the ceiling and I felt very much the happy homemaker.
The night I found out I was going to be divorced I drove through town looking through my tears at that light in the windows of homes, aching for the wholeness I thought I was losing.
It is a shade of light that speaks to me of nostalgia and home.
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