The rainbow house was an enigma, something unique to my son’s world, and I miss it. It was a place he created when he was about 3. One day he started drawing rainbows. He drew rainbow houses, people with rainbow hair, rainbow animals, rainbows everywhere. Once in a while, he would buck the preschool system by writing his name in a rainbow of colors. Some teachers didn’t appreciate this because he wasn’t following directions and taking longer than was expected, but I thought it was beautiful.
My son was bold and had so much depth for the little guy that he was. In kindergarten, he wanted to paint with colors that he was not “supposed to use”; colors that weren’t at his table. When the teacher wasn’t looking, he took one of the trays of orange over to his table and started painting. She asked him why he was using orange. He looked right at her and said, “because I wanted to.”
What I admired about him most was his transparency, the beauty to be untethered. I smiled when she told me this. I loved that simple, no-nonsense answer; I loved him. I loved the magical, colorful world he created and constantly reinvented for himself.
His rainbow house was filled with innocence, and to me, it still is. What I started to put together was the rainbow house was an imaginary fantasy world that he created for himself to go to escape, a safe, cozy place for him. I don’t blame him; we had some tough times. I was a solo mother. I was stressed; I yelled. Things weren’t the easiest, being just the two of us. He also had ADHD, and the world wasn’t always kind to him.
The rainbow house appeared when we started to find our groove. I have to admit, I was genuinely thrilled the first time he invited me to the rainbow house. I truly wanted to go to this rainbow house; it sounded like a psychedelic paradise. He promised we would have rainbow cookies and rainbow candy, along with his rainbow stuffies, and there would be presents for everyone. As an adult, this rainbow world sounded like just the escape I needed after a long week.
A few days later, and what became a common occurrence, I was uninvited to the rainbow house. “You’re not allowed in my rainbow house ever again! I have a new mom there, and she has long rainbow hair” This was the day after he handed me a drawing he made at school. It was me. I had a teal dress on and a huge beaded yellow necklace. The same necklace I had put on the day before that he had grabbed and broken.
I remembered that day, I had been having a lovely tranquil morning drinking my coffee and admiring the fabulous statement necklace that had beads the size of hubcaps on it, and then, for whatever reason, he grabbed it. The necklace broke, and my patience broke. It was the first thing I had bought myself in a long time. I yelled; I wasn’t proud. The picture showed it; he had drawn me with yellow hair, sticking straight up on end, along with large pencil grey eyes and red lines in them. Shit, I thought, no wonder he uninvited me to his rainbow house.
His friends, cute four-year-olds, would walk up to me at school pick-up asking about his rainbow house, with rainbow ponies and rainbow cookies. Sometimes they would be upset because they, too, had done something to piss him off and get put on the rainbow house blacklist. They would look at me with pleading eyes to see if there was anything I could do to help them get put back on the VIP guest list.
Years later, I was on a boat in the Cyclades staring in awe at the colors of the Aegean Sea, observing how deep, how clear, how transparent, and beautiful the many shades of blue surrounding me were. It made me think of how much the sea was like the rainbow house and the incredible child I had raised; the creator of the rainbow house. If only we could all be like that; transparent, deep and colorful.
On my last night in Greece, I found myself in tears because my friends were staying another week and I would be flying home alone. It was then I realized how much I missed the rainbow house. Flying terrified me ever since I had my son. The irony; I interviewed to be a flight attendant early in my professional life and was a travel agent for years, but now I hated flying. That’s parenting for you though. It’s a magical rainbow world filled with ups and downs, an utterly terrifying place at times. Things that thrilled us before having children would turn around to scare the hell out of us, and leave us in need of our own rainbow house, a place we too could escape the pressures of the world and feel safe again.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Robert Katzki on Unsplash
