About two years ago, C and I were taking a walk when he suddenly had something important to tell me. I knew it was important because he stopped, looked up at me, and said in a very serious voice, “Daddy.”

I stopped too. We were, after all, holding hands. “Yes?”

“I love pink.”

“Ah. Okay.”

This is not exactly what a dad wants to hear coming from his two year old son’s mouth. Not that there’s anything wrong with pink, mind you. Even so, after a little while of walking, I said “my favorite color’s purple.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “Mine’s pink.”

And so it has been for the past two years. Just recently, however, we had a breakthrough, of sorts. I was buckling him into his car seat when he suddenly looked up at me, appearing very upset. “Oh No!”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I lost my pink!”

“Your pink?”

“Yes. It’s gone! I lost my pink!”

I went through the list of all his toys that I could remember had pink in them, asking him if he’d lost them.

As I started asking, however, he overrode me with “No, no, no”

Finally, I shut up and he said “I like purple now.”

“Purple?”

“Yep. Purple.” Deep sigh. “I lost my pink.”

At long last, I knew what he was talking about. It was a good feeling. “Ah. Well, you can like both purple and pink, if you want to.”

“No. I lost my pink. I like purple now.”

Hooray!