On Yellow

by Sarah Albrecht

My perceptions of yellow have evolved over time. I remember sitting on my mom’s bed, tracing triangles in the quilt my grandmother had made, noticing the butter-colored triangles filling in between the printed blocks. I remember my shock as my mom told me my grandmother’s favorite color was yellow. Yellow?

I remember spending an inordinate amount of time in high school sifting through Frank Herbert’s Dune, looking for references to yellow because they were supposed to function as harbingers of doom. At that time yellow meant sickness, like jaundice and yellow fever.

I remember later road trips, with golden aspen leaves fluttering in clear mountain air, and fields of sunflowers turned to the sky in the San Joaquin Valley, and steep meadows spangled with goldenrod. I remember closing my eyes on warm winter afternoons in Arizona and feeling the gentle heat seep into my face—the touch of yellow. The pungent, vibrant scent of yellow leaps from a lemon in the refrigerator; the taste of yellow melts into the mouth in a bite of pie; the sound of yellow rustles in the trees in October.

Ah, yellow.