Pink or Red?

Taking a break from our UK adventures for a moment.... please bear with me dear readers!

So, this whole thing started for me when those Facebook notes were circling around a few years ago.  You know, fill out the questions and then tag people on them that might want to see them?

One of the questions was pink or red?  I was stumped.  Yeah, you must be thinking, what?  Why would a question like that bother you?  At the time I wrote both and time rolled on.  

I noticed that other friends had a preference and I wondered what the heck was wrong with me.  Why didn't I have a preference?  So, I started to pay attention to the question of pink or red?  At the time I was decorating my house.  I had just repainted and I was buying accessories to go into the space.  I realized that I did like to accent our home with red.  At the same time I had been totally drawn to pink clothes and I seemed to have an explosion in the color pink.  Then I really looked at my wardrobe and realized that I did not own a lot of red at all.  Hmmmm.... so I apparently liked to decorate in reds and wear pinks.  Interesting and it really seemed that my answer as both was pretty spot on.

Then I moved to the UK, had lots of crazy things happen... and still over time I have pondered this question.  Why?  Why does this question bother me so much?  It was when my mother in law was here during her last visit that I finally figured it out.  

When I was little, I was a girly-girl.  I loved all things pink and I loved to wear dresses.  My poor mom was horrified.  She is not a girly-girl.  She hated dresses as a little girl.  She never wanted to wear them, her mom MADE her and she hated it.  So, these things filtered down onto me.  Which has nothing to do with pink, yet.

I was about 6 and I needed a winter coat so, my mother sent my grandmother out to take me shopping for one.  I found the most beautiful PINK puffy coat.  I LOVED it.  It was BEAUTIFUL.  I bet that you might have a guess where this is going?  My mom detested it.  Hated it.  I was a devastated.   

As many of you know my parents were divorced when I was little.  A family of 3 that became a family of two.  Just me and my mom against the world.  So, I had spent some of the time dealing with that by pairing us together, I was pink (my favorite color) and my mom was blue.  I did it with our favorite candies, and anything else that I could.  So, when she hated my coat.  I tried to be a pink hater.... not always very successfully either ;)  But that messed up my pink and blue color thing, because my mom disliked pink so much, and her favorite color was blue.  I changed my favorite color to blue too.  

So, fast forward to now.  It has made me realize that I want my children to choose their own style and get the things that they want.  I took my oldest son shoe shopping and he loved a pair of denim high tops.  I was surprised.  It was not what I would have picked out for him and then I said too much and he decided that he did not want to get them anymore.  He knows about the pink coat story and I reminded him to not make this a "pink coat".  I want him to find his own style.

I realized that what happened years ago had made me try and be a pink hater. I don't want my actions or words to inadvertently affect my children as my mother's had inadvertently affected me.  I have been letting go of hating pink unconsciously the last few years and it has been exploding around me.  I think that having only boys, has intensified my need for pink.  I have watched my wardrobe, which was mostly made up of neutrals explode with PINK (purples, too).  Now that I know why I have been reluctant to buy pinks, I have let it go and embraced it.  What can I say?  I love PINK!  

I will say that not all pinks appeal to me (Pepto Bismol).  I will NEVER get a pink car and there is such a thing as too much pink.  I would love to have a beautiful RED Volkswagon Beetle or a cute Red BMW or even a little red Audi TT!   Hey, a girl can dream, right?  :)