Orange you glad
Emmy Jansen
MSMU Class of 2023
(4/2021) A church pew. A red velvet throw pillow missing one of its golden tassels. A shelf that held only miniature figurines of U.S. presidents. A wall covered in postcards and photographs from decades, eras, and places far from here. Chandeliers of stained glass reminiscent of English pubs. A standing lamp made of a mermaid’s teal body with the lampshade being a pink shag fabric found in a teenage girl’s bedroom. A statue of a frog hugging its stomach sitting between the doorframe and the corner of the wall.
The odds and ends made up the perfect antique store, a haven where treasure hunters and collectors could spend hours sifting for the one item that would be the competition of their obsession. Decades of history, dust, and memories packed into these small rooms, almost suffocating the passersby. An emporium of lost treasures and found objects.
Except it was a house. It was my house. Here I lived for eighteen years, surrounded by discarded objects that original owners hadn’t wanted that my parents graciously decided they did. They weren’t hoarders; our house was always tidy, and no object was ever out of place, even if out of place it looked. Bringing friends over was always embarrassing though, so I rarely ever did it. At first, I thought everything was normal. I soon came to realize that most other kids didn’t grow up surrounded by new objects constantly being added with nothing ever being removed.
But the worst part about the house was not the church pew sitting in our living room. It wasn’t the lamp whose base was a chicken statue. It wasn’t the framed portrait of George Washington above the fireplace, where a family photo should have been. It was the kitchen cabinets. Sickeningly orange. Bright enough to be neon, dark enough that it was a debate whether it was more of a red, and deep enough to make every other color in the room dull: this was the color of our kitchen cabinets.
Comparatively, the rest of the house was, dare I say, normal. The mishmash of Persian and Navajo rugs that covered the hardwood floor of every room seemed like a modern trend if your eyes ever wandered to the hue of the kitchen. And your eyes couldn’t help but wander. The room radiated a glow throughout the house, escaping from the doorway and casting a warm hue onto the dining room. It was an elephant that wasn’t even in the room but made its presence known from down the hall.
I did not go in the kitchen. In fact, I avoided it vehemently and loudly. Complaint after complaint I hurled at my mother from across the dining room table, which was a solid oak even though the chairs were anywhere from Victorian throne to tan wicker. Can we please paint the cabinets? Any color. Yellow. Pink. Green. But not the fluorescent papaya that was splashed all over our kitchen. In my adolescent stubbornness, I set foot in the room as little as possible.
When I moved out on my own for the first time, it was exhilarating. Freedom and independence, yes, but more importantly, an escape from the eclectic—and orange—style that my parents had always adopted. After bouncing between apartment complexes during my collegiate years, I had finally saved up enough to move into a house. It was a rancher in the suburbs, on a very small plot of land. It needed work, quite a bit, but it was necessary for my price range. I was up for the challenge; nothing, in my mind, could be worse than what I had been raised in.
Days of ripping up carpets, caulking tile, and repairing rotted siding would all be worth it. At the end, I had a house, all my own, with things that were only owned by me. No church pew. No chicken lamps. No Navajo rugs.
Fixing up the house was a slow but steady process, mostly done after I came home from work. But in no time, the house took shape and became a home. The last thing on my list was the kitchen, my piPce de résistance. Some tiles needed to be replaced but the countertops were in great condition for the cheap laminate they’d been made from. To please the inner child that had been, I splurged and bought new cabinet doors. Part of me felt that by doing so, I would reverse the nightmare that I had lived with and bring about the culmination of the story. To put that part of the past behind me. I ordered the cabinets and waited anxiously for confirmation that they had arrived at the store.
I received a call from the saleswoman who’d sold them to me early in the week, but the town had been blanketed in a snowstorm after that and my Honda did not have a close relationship with icy roads. It wasn’t until early the next Saturday morning that I was able to drive to the store, tires sloshing every mile, to pick up the new doors. When I placed the order, I could have paid extra to have them professionally painted but I left them unfinished. Maybe it’s over the top, but I wanted the personal satisfaction of painting them myself, any color I wanted. I was still debating on what color I should paint them. White seemed too dull. Black was too deep. A wood finish, perhaps? I hoped the right color would make itself obvious and the scarlet hue from the past would dissolve into this new shade.
The doorbell chimed as I walked into the store, being instantly greeted by the familiar saleswoman. After I loaded the new doors into the back of my Honda, I asked her where I could browse the paints, exhilaration flowing through my veins.
"So, unfortunately because of the snowstorm, the truck that delivers our shipments has been delayed. The only paint we have in stock is orange, will that be okay?"
