Colors of Memory

Colors of Memory

by ; Hamid Safi

The first memory I can recall is red. Not the loud, brash red of a fire engine, but the warm, fading crimson of my grandmother’s kitchen curtains, the ones that caught the afternoon sun and painted the room in a glow that felt like safety. I remember sitting on a wooden chair, legs dangling, watching her knead dough for some bread I didn’t yet understand the meaning of, the aroma filling the space with comfort. Red, I realized, was the color of love—steady, unassuming, and present in the little gestures that quietly shape a childhood.

Blue came next. A different kind of memory, one tinged with longing. I was ten, lying on a dock by the lake, feet skimming the water, staring at the sky as it shifted from midday to evening. My father, a man of few words, had taken me fishing, though neither of us knew how to catch anything. Still, the vastness of the lake mirrored the vastness of my questions about the world, the questions I was too shy to ask aloud. Blue became my color of curiosity and melancholy, of moments suspended between wonder and unease, the feeling of being small yet infinite all at once.

Then there was yellow. Bright, almost painfully so, like the sun striking the field where I chased fireflies one summer evening. I had scraped my knees countless times on those rough blades of grass, but the laughter we shared with my friends burned through the sting. Yellow, I realized, was joy in motion—the careless abandon of youth, when the world was all possibility and scraped knees were badges of courage.

Green came later, though it lingered in subtle ways. The garden behind my childhood home, where I spent hours coaxing reluctant seedlings from soil, was my secret kingdom. Every sprout felt like a small triumph, every bloom a private celebration. Green was patience, growth, and hope. It was the slow understanding that life could be nurtured, that mistakes could be forgiven, and that beauty, though sometimes quiet, could flourish if tended with care.

Purple, strange and elusive, arrived in the twilight of my teenage years. I remember sitting in the library, the stained-glass windows catching the fading light and casting shards of violet across the pages of my notebook. I wrote then—not poems exactly, but fragments of myself I didn’t yet know how to understand. Purple became the color of introspection, of longing for something that existed beyond the confines of the familiar. It was the ache of first love, the confusion of growing pains, and the quiet solitude of self-discovery.

Orange appeared unexpectedly. It was the autumn of my first heartbreak, leaves burning underfoot as I wandered streets I thought I knew. The warmth of orange carried both the pain and the beauty of endings—of things that must fall to make way for what comes next. Orange was anger and acceptance wrapped in the same hue, a fiery reminder that life moves forward whether or not we are ready.

And then there was gray. I don’t like gray, but I cannot escape it. It came slowly, during nights when the world felt too heavy, when silence became a weight pressing against my chest. Gray is memory itself, the kind that lingers between colors, the faded snapshots that hurt to recall but would feel wrong to forget. Gray is grief, and uncertainty, and the spaces between joy and sorrow where we learn the shape of ourselves.

Yet amidst all these colors, I have learned that they do not exist in isolation. Memory is not linear. Often, I feel them layered, overlapping—yellow with streaks of orange, blue bleeding into green, red touched with gray. The colors mingle like a watercolor painting left out in the rain, impossible to separate, yet somehow more beautiful for it.

Last night, I found myself painting again. Not with brushes, but with words, letting each memory spill onto paper in the colors it demanded. Red for comfort, blue for longing, yellow for laughter, green for growth, purple for reflection, orange for endings, gray for absence. And in that act, I realized that memory, like color, is alive. It is messy, beautiful, painful, and fleeting. It reminds us of who we were, who we are, and who we might become.

In the end, I do not seek to arrange the colors neatly. Life itself is not a palette to be organized. But as I look back on the streaks and splotches of my past, I smile. I recognize the red warmth of love that started it all. I feel the blue depth of curiosity and the yellow spark of joy. I see the green patience that carried me, the purple reflection that guided me, the orange fire that transformed me, and the gray shadows that reminded me I am human.

Memory is not a single hue—it is every shade, every tone, every bleed and blend that makes up the canvas of a life. And if I am lucky, I will keep painting, keep remembering, and keep living in all the colors I have yet to discover.