My mother loved orange,
said it was cheerful
and Frank Sinatra’s favorite color.
Interior decoration was her hobby.
She read in Better Homes and Gardens
that bright accessories make a house cozy:
so, the paddle of the churn
and the handle of the coffee grinder
and all the old things brought
from barns in Oklahoma to decorate
our house in Early American
were painted orange.

She put quilts on all the beds,
shuttered the windows,
and covered the floors with rag rugs,
sewed white eyelet dust ruffles,
and saved S&H Green Stamps
for a maple milking stool
and a milk glass lamp.

My father was a do-it-yourselfer
who worked at his Shopsmith,
building plate rails and knickknack shelves
and maple cabinets to hide the TV and Hi Fi.
He laid a used-brick façade
part way up the front of the house
and though he said all painters are crazy,
did the painting himself.

My father hated green—
made him think of the Depression
and the green paint his mother had gotten for free:
the green paint that covered everything
in their house, outside and inside
including the furniture.
Green made him think of the Army
the PO, the DMV
and the telephone company he worked for.
Still, he rolled and rolled the walls green,
the perfect background for orange.