She was born in spring, a mere eight years ago. A starlet, she was, living at the edge of the introduction of Technicolor. She gazes out the window, legs and pigtails swinging like synchronized pendulums, eager for time to speed up. Warm arms wrap around her. A proud mother is a golden sun’s embrace.

When a child cannot see color, learning to perceive it through touch is second nature. One learns to feel everything—the pulse of the world’s heart in every vein of its existence. The waiting room smells sterile, with a hint of aromatic mint sealed in fresh plastic, like every other clinic in the city. The girl’s longing eyes watch the weeping willows backdropped by a dull silver sky with cumulus bleach spots. The ribbons she had chosen that morning were pale as dust.

She is young enough to imagine pigment as magic still, but, as if everlastingly at the brink of a dream, she misses a realm of people she had never had the freedom to see.

Her mother’s clothes were always soft and gentle in tone, feeling like a soft white to the girl.
“Color is not everything,” she would assure her. “The world is painted in shape…shaped in smile.” The girl knew her mother’s voice carried the ache of someone missing a part of her heart.

When the doctor entered, he brought with him a small white box. “We have calibrated it for your color range,” he explained. “Sweet mademoiselle, are you ready?”

The girl nodded, though her throat felt tight. Memories rushed over her—a raging river of doubt and endless wondering—about the way other children put names to everything, like “pink” and “seafoam,” as if those words meant something… something more.

As the doctor drew the glasses nearer, her muscles grew tense, and her hands tightened around her mother’s arm. The heavy eyeglasses tingled her little nose. In the darkness, there was a flicker. Then, her eyes crawled up and out of hibernation…and it was too much at once. The white walls bloomed into a pinkish warmth. Her mother—her lovely mother—became a living painting, wrapped in a dress the gentlest hue she had ever seen.

“Mom?” Her voice cracked. Tears slipped down before she realized she was crying.
Her mother knelt in front of her. “It’s alright, my girl,” her cracking voice wavered as she brushed a wet strand of hair from her cheek.

“Ma,” the girl whispered, reaching out. “You’re… beautiful. Oh, ma!”

Her mother smiled through tears of her own, dropping down to her knees in surrender to joy. The girl buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, overwhelmed by every color that makes up life.

Outside the window, the world burst with life—the shades of which she had somehow always dreamed.
“Undying winter…it—it’s over. Everything’s pastel now, dear.”