Technicolor to Fifty Shades

We left Florida for a brief visit to Massachusetts. The first night it snowed three inches and the thermometer registered twenty-nine degrees.  Five days later we escaped a second snowstorm that pelted our region as we winged our way south in a metal tube.

You might think that what we missed most about Florida during the trip was warmth.  It was not.  It was ----- color!

We left a technicolor world and entered a monochromatic world in fifty shades of you-guessed-it, gray.  The heavy, wet snow bowed tree branches into arcs, making the scene spectacular.  But white, like black, is not a color.

People wore navy, olive, dark brown, or black to absorb the heat.  The most colorful sight we saw in the ground was a brazen patch of yellow and purple crocuses daring the cold.  It was beaten into submission with the first snowstorm.

We also saw a team of Little Leaguers practicing in red jerseys against a backdrop of frozen silt.  They'd probably be snowed out of their season opener.

I missed the de rigueur dress code of Florida, where women wore tees emblazoned with eye-popping sunflowers or preening parrots.  Their sandals boasted glass garnets of rubies and topazes.  White tennis outfits gave way to blocks of color like lavender with matching ruffles or white polka dots on aqua backgrounds. 

Men wore loafers without socks, revealing tanned ankles.  Their golf shirts ranged from bubblegum pink to sapphire blue and the more adventurous wore shorts of Kelly Green.  Linen jackets in baby blue or straw fronted dark tees or striped dress shirts.

On our trip north I vowed never again to tell Charley the shirt he loves with palm trees and pineapples had gone out of style ten years ago.