Not All White Walls AreThe Same

Some live to tell a tale.

I grew up with two kinds of white walls. And then, in 2020, I met the third kind.

Marked by a silver lamp post, a shiny black front door, and a bright red carport where my grandfather's buttercup yellow Toyota Corolla was stationed, the four-bedroom duplex on Amethyst Street was painted milky white inside and out. Rod iron bars, like Spanish lace, accented frosted glass-shuttered windows. A dark green pine tree stood tall in the front yard.

As soon as you walked in, you saw a large gold-framed mirror hung between two large sliding glass doors across a spacious open living room. A hilly fern garden spread across the backyard like a plush textured wall. A speckled black and white terrazzo floor floated underneath an aqua silk-brocade sofa set, covered in matching blue-tinted plastic to protect the fine sateen threads from wear and tear. Instead of the typical Spanish-style dining room sets, my grandparents opted for Modern Danish — a testament to my grandmother's inherent sense of style and continental flair, slightly elevated in simple ways. The decoupage collage wall under the stair nook, where a black rotary phone sat on a shelf, was a groovy cherry on this sophisticated coconut delight.

The kitchen, however, was nowhere in sight. It was as if my grandmother had tucked it away behind a secret door for fear that I would get stuck in it like she did — never finish school, never fulfill my great destiny. She never told me what this destiny was, but she assured me that, unlike hers, I would be free to do great things.

My grandparents' house was where I spent most of my time playing with friends, flying kites, racing paper boats down street gutters in the pouring rain, riding my purple bike around their cul-de-sac, singing at the top of my lungs as if no one could hear me — until my parents picked me up to go back home.

That white was not an absence of color. It was a lighthouse. Every color in that house honored it. You walked in and felt held.

My mother's white walls were different.

She got married four times. Each time, the walls went white again — a fresh coat, a fresh start, an escape hatch. Her white was never a destination. It was a departure lounge. She was always searching for true love and would never quit until she found it. I understood this eventually. But as a child, all I knew was that her white felt temporary in a way my grandmother's never did.

Today, my mother still wears red lipstick. She has lived happily single for thirty years in a home lit up by yellow walls that feel like a warm Puerto Rican sunrise every time she walks in through the door. She found her color. She found her home. It just wasn't white.

Fast forward to 2020. A pandemic. Our house sold unlisted. Six weeks to evacuate to a luxury penthouse apartment — modern, beautiful, and white-walled in the third way. The loveless, echoey, impersonal kind. The kind found in expensive temporary apartments where anyone can live, where nothing belongs to anyone, white in the name of turnover convenience dressed up as freshness and flexibility.

I was in color purgatory. My baggage felt like rubble. Nothing was grounded.

Thinking I couldn't paint the walls, I started dreaming of a table. One day I found her on the side of the road with a for-free sign. Just imagine Ted Lasso's boss as a sofa table — big and beautiful, with long legs, heels, and a scallop skirt. I took her home. She sat in my apartment for nine months because the only color she could be was red. Root chakra red. In honor of Ganesha. In honor of Diwali. A table dressed in red to greet everyone with its light.

Red was my mother's color baggage. For decades, it was a hard no for me. And now here I was, about to paint a table that would become a gigantic pair of red lips in my entryway.

The day came when I woke up, surrendered, and said, "Okay. Red it is."

The night before I started painting, a friend recommended a painter who quoted an exorbitant price. Scott and I were out with friends past midnight unpacking the pros and cons of painting ourselves. We had every reasonable con — too late, too long, better after the holidays, and my smoking gun: "We can't because we stayed up till 2 AM drinking whiskey and tequila discussing the pros and cons with you."

They had no cons. Only one pro: "Get the fuck out of bed and do it because you need to do it and you can."

The same thing a Jungian business consultant had told me about reconnecting to my roots in 2017.

There is a saying: if someone calls you a donkey twice, buy a saddle.

I had to buy a saddle.

The following morning I rolled out of bed around 10. I looked at the table and thought, maybe I can start today. I painted the table and the walls of the apartment in four days.

The red table broke ground. What followed was a beautiful version of life in shades of belonging I had never lived in before — midnight corduroy blues, heavenly misty lavenders, sultry smoky forest greens, whites, blacks, and everything in between. Friends came over and couldn't believe how much it felt like our old home, even though I hadn't used a single one of my old colors.

I was the one who had to do the root work and the painting because I needed to face my greatest fear: what if my color harmonies had lost their magic? What if I painted and nothing happened?

They hadn't. They never do.

My grandmother's white was never running away from color. It was never indecision. It was a perfect example of becoming the palette — authentically, intentionally, without fear.

That white is coquina white. And here's the thing about coquina — the compressed shell and coral that built the forts and walls of the Caribbean — it doesn't actually come in white. It comes in pink, purple, yellow, orange, lavender, and blue. White is just what happens when a million colors compress together over time into something solid, pale, and full of light.

My grandmother understood this instinctively. Her white walls weren't the absence of color. They were the sum of it.

That was the same white I found in a clam shell on a gray Bainbridge beach. The same white that sparked the heart of my new CB Finishes.

You are the palette you seek.

Please go on!

Finding True Love in a Bucket of Paint →

A Seashell Named Ramon →

If this sparked something — I'd love to hear about it. Share your story in the comments, tag us with #ColorBaggage, or write to 

frontdesk@colorbaggage.com.

From my bag to yours,
G