Life in color.

Once a year when I was a kid, my family stayed up late and watched The Wizard of Oz together on television.  One of the things that I always noticed and pondered was that in Kansas, before the twister carries the house away to Oz, Dorothy, Toto and Aunty Em inhabit a black and white wasteland. 
When she arrives in Oz though, things suddenly erupt into color for Dorothy.  Technicolor actually.  The sky is blue, the yellow brick road is yellow, the poppy field is red,  the Emerald City is emerald, and the rainbow is, well, rainbow. 


Just as Dorothy's life before Oz was lived in shades of dull and dusty gray, when I imagine my parents as children, I imagine them in black and white.  Perhaps it was because the only photos of them as children were in black and white.  Or because all of the TV shows I associated with their childhood - Leave it to Beaver, for example - were in black and white.  Whatever the reason, still to this day, when I imagine my parents' life before I arrived in it, I only see them and their world in black and white.

Of course I know that they lived in color, just as I always have, and that neither my birth nor the advent of technicolor TV actually changed the spectrum or vibrancy of their lives.  But, now that Audrey has arrived, I would say that I did use to live in relative black and white and shades of dull gray.  Her birth has changed the way I look at people and the world around me.  Changed what I see and how I react to it.  The grass is greener, the sun shines brighter.  I am definitely not in Kansas anymore.

Kato

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