More Than Civil

With chin cupped in hand, I stared at the computer monitor.

“Burning your eyebrows with all that musing you seem to be doing?” Mom’s chuckling voice broke into my reverie. “A penny for your thoughts!”

Slowly I uncurled myself on my chair and clasped my hands behind my head. “Oh, I was just wondering how to go about this writing. The topic for this week in Writer’s Challenge is ‘Blue.’ I’m totally dry.”

Again, Mom chuckled. “You’ll get it.”

Hours passed...and yet no inspiration. “Hey, Mitch,” I finally asked my younger sister, “what do you picture in your mind when you think of ‘blue’?”

Mitch pegged up the little boy shirt on the washing line before replying. “Blue? Well, it’s my favourite color. Everything blue catches my attention. If that’s of some use to you.” She chuckled softly.

“Some help.” I teased, feigning a pout.

“There! We’re done.” Mitch stretched out on the grass, and was quiet. “How about the blue sky?”

“What about it?”

“It’s up to your imaginative imagination to find out.”

By evening, I was still tossing around ideas, yet never pinning down one that I was quite happy with.

“Neng,” Jops, the youngest of us three girls, jabbed her tea towel into a bowl and wiped briskly, “d’you figure out something already? The deadline’s almost here, you know.” She grinned at me mischievously, clattering the silverware through her tea towel.

I shot her a humorous glance. “Not yet.” Slowly I swirled the sponge round and round in the sink. Blue. Blue. Blue.

“What about this.” Jops mustered up her most intelligent look. “’Are you feeling blue? Look up at the beautiful blue sky, and you’ll feel like new!’” At this, she broke off and burst out laughing at herself. “Lame!”

Suddenly, a thought came to me. “Well, remember how we used to be fascinated with the significance of flag emblems and colors?”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing much, I just remembered how blue also stood for unity and peace, like the blue of the flag of our homeland. I was intrigued when Dad told us that our flag was special.”

“How’s that?” Jops’ black eyes glimmered with interest, yet she didn’t lose a single beat in her energetic drying.

“Well, Dad said that the blue stripe is always above the red stripe during times of peace, and then during war, when our men would stand up for our country, they’d turn the flag upside down, so that the red flew on top. With that in mind, I actually like that meaning of bl—oh!”

At that moment, one of our little brothers had hurled himself at me, grasping at my skirts in wild excitement. Vigorously, he tried to wriggle himself between me and the sink. “Big brother’s getting me! Big brother’s getting me!” he cried. I turned around to see ten-year-old Arnel standing calmly behind me, his eyes twinkling mischievously.

“Oh, stop it, you two!” I began in exasperation, “I’m trying...to...clean the kitchen.” At the last few words, I couldn’t help my voice softening into amusement. “Go on, now!” I finished off, playfully splashing both boys with a spray of my sudsy water.

Jops leaned back against the counter. “Well!” she drawled coolly, “at least they were happy and playing nicely together, you know. That was a picture of peace.”

I smiled sheepishly. “Yeah.”

Jops flung her tea towel up on the hook to dry. “Hey, Neng, don’t stress; you’ll figure out how to attack that Blue. You’ll get it,” she assured me, heading for her special reading corner.

Carefully, I put away the last stack of plates and wiped down the counters. In the adjoining room, I could hear Mitch playing a meditative Debussy, while the younger children had their last romp before bedtime. I smiled, when I heard Jops’s merry, girlish laugh ring out. Blue—the color for equality. Noble ideals. Unity. I flicked the kettle on to boil. Blue—how about for brotherly peace? I think that just might be a good idea.