Yellow
Sitting in an early morning class, the night after trying to cram in some class readings, I had a small, internal revolution. I laugh, looking back, because I know life isn’t formed by successive big “movie” moments, but this moment, could be the dramatic opening scene that starts this next section of life for me.
On a chilly October morning, a few semesters back, the professor asked, “What significance is the author trying to get at when talking about yellow daffodils?”I was stumped. Speed reading the night before did not prepare me for this seemingly minute detail. 
“Well, yellow is a happy color. It reminds me of sunshine,” someone said. Internally, my eyes rolled. I had despised this color until I turned twenty. It had always been a shallow relationship to happiness, a forced way to be bright. Twenty years of age came around for me and I noticed being slightly more attracted to the hue, but I knew it wasn’t that I was living in constant sunshine and happiness. The professor kept looking for more out of our class discussion.
A few moments later, someone raised their hand to speak and said, “Yellow, to me, has always been a color of age, transition, or death.” 
“Yes!” the professor exclaimed. “The author wants us to understand the coming of age and growth of this character in everything she’s going through.”My sleepy soul perked up. These connotations of yellow made so much more sense to me. 
Walking back home from the class, I looked up and noticed the fall leaves. Yellow and dying, going through their big transition to the ground for decomposing. The sun’s glow is old. The stars turn yellow before they die. The green leaves die and we call it beautiful, because beautiful it is, to burn a bright yellow as we fall. The books of the past fade out of pristine white and into hazy, aged yellow.
These days are singing of the constant and drastic changes that are about to come. Change used to be between grades of school, getting used to teachers and classes. Now, graduation draws near and the patterns of school won’t continue to be in my routine. But in this uncertainty about the future, I look to yellow. How it holds the dichotomy of happiness and death, light and transition. 
Yellow of the night feels different than yellow of the day, and yellow of death and change has just as much voice as yellow of laughter and smiles.
I can accept my aging. I can accept change and transitions. I can accept how this hue finds me with small doses and little reminders and change is apart of time. Time cannot be stopped and the leaves will always fall. Life will soon look different, and I can accept these coming years, saturated in yellow with new steps and new leaps.