Coloring Outside the Lines
What we learn in kindergarten is supposed to stay with us and help us for the rest of our lives. As best I recall, we weren’t doing geometry in kindergarten. We were learning how to socialize. That means getting along with others and behaving ourselves under the guidance of authority. I can’t prove it, but I suspect there was some coloring going on during kindergarten. It makes perfectly good sense to encourage coloring by kindergarteners. Colors are a necessary part of the world and understanding the relationship between colors and forms (even two dimensional ones) is important. Have you seen that clip of the man who has lived his life colorblind who is given a pair of high-tech glasses that allow him to experience colors for the first time in his life? He almost can’t stand it and breaks down into tears of wonder and joy over the visage. Color is a very big deal in the world.
I have just spent several days with our friends, who we will call Jack and Jill. I have known Jill since 1989, so exactly thirty years. At the time she was girlfriend to my best friend Paul, whom she later married and then divorced. She was from Virginia. She still has his last name, mostly for convenience from what I can tell. Jack was my next door condo neighbor at my first residence in Park City (I ended up having five different residences over fifteen years of owning a home there). We met in 1992 since he and his wife Mary were about the only people ever around at the condo and Jack was an avid skier and therefore logical buddy to me. I recall that Jack and Mary used to call me and my second wife “The Louds” since we were in the habit of getting into rather vocal disagreements. Jack and Mary lived on a lovely colonial-era apple farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and Mary was a historical restoration buff. Mary passed away fifteen years ago and one of my fondest memories is seeing her in her final days at her beloved home, when she told me to take care of Jack.
After Mary passed and given Jill’s then unattached status, I suggested to Jack that it might be a good idea to reach out to Jill. I knew she had always liked and respected Jack and suspected they would be good for each other. Jack took the initiative from there and soon Jack and Jill were an item. They have been together for the past fifteen years and it has been a typically tumultuous time in all regards. The economy and politics have been topsy-turvey to say the least. Jill’s free spirit and particular blend of devotion and sensitivity were not a replica of Mary’s iron will and grit. Jack had lost his long-time companion and counter-balance and that made for an unsettling existence for a long time. But Jack and Jill remained Jack and Jill despite occasional bouts of emotional trauma, several solo vacations from each other and plenty of good times traveling the world, which they both loved to do. Jack had always loved travel more than Mary preferred and Jill had always hankered to travel, but hadn’t the means. This alone made for common ground and provided some relationship glue.
Jack is a Marshall Scholar, which he has explained to me is actually rarer than Rhodes Scholarship. He attended the prestigious London School of Economics and worked first in the federal government and then in the world of New York private equity, long before it was fashionable. He is a very cerebral man with deep knowledge in many fields and leading-edge technologies. He was a successful tech venture capitalist who plied the waters of the Washington DC Beltway and drove home to the Shenandoah Valley to see what new historical project Mary had undertaken. When Mary fought the Department of Interior to replace the Gettysburg Battlefield fencing for historical correctness, it was Jack who bid and won the erroneous split rails and used them for his farm on the cheap. Such was the exacting opportunism and economic finesse of the man.
Jill is a woman of the heart. She is a kind soul who trusts too much and asks too little of others. She has taken to the affectation of wearing only black, which offsets against her fair long hair and alabaster skin. She is a vegetarian and an avid photographer. Surprisingly, somewhere along the line (most likely while employed as a technology trainer for Xerox in its sales heyday) she developed a deep understanding of technology at the practical level and is a go-to person on any PC, TV or cell phone problem you can encounter.
Jack and Jill are a wonderful couple that share a common political view (that would be a blue one), but who otherwise could not be more different. John Gray could have written Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus about Jack and Jill. They are both unconventional in a wide range of ways, but I’m not sure anyone would ever accuse either of being gender-fluid. Jack chooses to live in San Francisco, so there is nothing homophobic about him, but most men would recognize his manner and humor as decidedly masculine. He has many hues to him, but there is no mistaking the color of money as running down the middle of his psyche. Jill is very soft and sweet in a feminine way with all the colors of the rainbow coming out of the tips of her fingers, but the burden of managing her and Jack’s life and day have made her dominant color that of the blue steel that runs down her spine. Surviving with Jack would stiffen the resolve of the most wavering of willows.
Jill colors Jack’s world, which tends towards shades of grey. That grey is part of the Silent Generation (Jack inhabits the middle of that cohort) and is characterized by discipline, deeply held values, and a strong sense of determination and willpower. All good qualities but rarely colorful. I like to think of Jill as dressed in black because she graciously donates all her color to the world. And it’s good that Jill enjoys coloring outside the lines because penetrating Jack’s core would be less successful than surrounding him in a halo of color as Jill does every day.