Orange

“Hi baby boy, I am going to sit down and write next to you while you go to sleep”
“I want to see one Lego Star Wars”
"Nope I am going to write about the color orange”
“I like the color orange”

“Yes I know you do, Now go to sleep Griffin”
“Yes! You typed my name”
“Now will you go to sleep?”
“I can’t”
“OK” I say and close the computer.
We snuggle down under the orange patch work quilt with the picture of a griffin a painted in the middle square that his grand mother made for him.
“What is orange” I ask him.
“A color, I don’t know how to spell it. OOO it starts with ‘O’.” he says
“ You are right but what things are orange?” I clarify.
“ An orange shirt is orange, an orange is orange, the sun is mostly orange, an orange house, orange pants, orange socks, orange crayons....” he rattles off many things all started by the adjective orange. in the process he pains an entire car and and entire house orange including the windows of each.
As a younger child he seemed to love the color orange so he indeed had orange shirts and socks.  He does not list as he begins to drift off saying “orange orange orange clouds, orange pumpkin, orange orange orange....” the orange coat that he got one year.
I was a cozy coat made more for the weather of California in winter than for that of his Wisconsin home. It was a reversible fleece jacket that one side was a medium gray soft brushed nylon with accents of the dark burnt orange fleece and the other the dark burnt orange fleece with accents of the gray. He loved it so much that we had to layer him through out the winter so he could wear it through the winter.
I was always amazed that he liked the color. It is a color that many don’t like and many don’t choose as a favorite. But it was his and still is a preferred color but he has now bowed to the peer pressure of picking more blues, greens, and blacks for his attire.