Day 11 Slept through my deadline and silk is lavender

So my sleep schedule has been all kinds of screwed up lately. I've been going to bed around 4-5AM and waking up around noon or later. Today I forced myself to wake up early, then passed out until now. Oops. Maybe I should consider caffeine to help me through the day.

Day 11: Write from the point of view of a person who has synesthesia (a condition in which one type of sensory stimulation evokes a different sense, as when hearing a sound produces the visualization of a colour). 

I never thought of myself as odd until my mother tried to teach me an appreciation of expensive fabrics. I think it was after I asked her why she was spending $100 on a piece of fabric to tie around her neck. She took the raw silk scarf, hand painted with Hokusai's the wave painting, and offered it for me to feel. 

"Do you feel that? It's liquid smooth," she told me then. I told her it felt like lavender. She was confused. The scarf was predominantly blue and white. Where would lavender come from? I kept insisting that it was lavender. My mother, bless her, had an inkling of what I was talking about. She handed me another silk scarf. 

"This one feels like more grey muddled into the lavender." 

My mother looked at me silently for a moment, then told me it was a rougher silk, not as high quality. 

We had fun experimenting with all the different textiles in her closet. Her favourite petal pink tweed suit felt clean white to me. The red Prada leather heels were black. My mother's hands, each time she handed me something, felt like a warm peach-cherry that I can't quite place or find on any colour spectrum.

I told my father he felt like a forest-like green. Both green and brown but not hazel. Maybe a touch of dark blue, too. My best friend, Mimi, registered as vibrant orange that pulses pink. My cat is, her orange fur notwithstanding, a comforting dove grey/robin blue that I can only compare to a blanket I'd want to wrap around myself. 

When I got older I tried to explain to my significant others. Some of them were understanding, even amused. Others just didn't get it. "You can't FEEL colours, that's not possible," claimed one fellow. He felt like harsh black and white. 

My husband, when I first dated him, felt like waves of calming, water blue. He didn't ask me to report on the colour of everything I touched, but always listened when I discovered a new colour. I was sometimes frustrated trying to explain a colour that just doesn't exist, but he and his blue calmed me down. 

When we married, my lace white dress felt golden, the colour of sunlight and, I know this is cheesy, but hopeful. Like the golden brick road. 

Holding my newborn daughter now, she feels like a still blending pale blue, with traces of yellow. It's not green, it's just blue and yellow at the same time. Years later she would tell me, "Mama, your voice is so pretty. It sounds like silver and blue."