Mixing Colors

​(First Published on "Focus on Yourself" on 6/13/15)

This morning, I decided to spend some time playing Play Dough with my almost two-year-old. As you can imagine, this activity requires a great deal of vigilance on my part to ensure that the Play Dough doesn’t become a permanent fixture in the surrounding carpet and furniture. 

So, I pull out the cheap, red vinyl tablecloth that I got at Wal-Mart for about five dollars, and my daughter squeals with delight. I spread it out on the floor, and she immediately falls down onto it and rolls around on it screeching, “Yay, Mommy! Yay!” 

I place the container holding the little jars of Play Dough, and she immediately grabs one and thrusts it at me. 

“Open geen, Mommy! Open!” 

“What’s the magic word?” I say.

“Pweeeeeese!!” she says at a pitch that I’m sure will break all the windows in the house. 

She giggles with delight when I hand her the ball of soft, green dough. 

“Sanks, Mom!” 

And so we begin to play together. I make easily recognizable shapes or simple, small creations using my limited imagination, and she smashes them between her tiny fingers amidst fits of giggles and says, “More! More!” 

I show her how to roll the dough into balls, and then I chase them as she launches them across the room.  

“The Play Dough stays on the mat,” I tell her. 

“Otay, Mom!” 

At one point, my daughter picks up two different colors of dough and squishes them together. I feel my pulse race and my vision go blurry as I hear my Mom’s voice in my head saying, “Don’t mix the colors! It’s a waste of dough, and you’ll never get them apart again!” 

Then I noticed that as we have been playing, I have been very diligent about keeping the colors separate from one another. When I make a shape or create a brand new animal, it is out of all one color. 

Well that’s no fun, I thought to myself. My daughter is currently ecstatic over her multi-colored creation. 

“Dat’s so pretty, Mom!” she says. 

Yes, yes it is. So why haven’t I done this before?

Suddenly, I’m back in my parents’ dining room sitting on the floor on a similar, but different, cheap, red tablecloth. My sister is making “pizza” while I’m cranking the arm of an incredibly creepy Play Dough dolly and making her hair grow in yellow, spaghetti-like strands. Then I hear my mom.

“Don’t do that! You’re wasting the dough!” 

I look up to see my sister committing the unpardonable Play Dough sin: she had rolled green and red together to the point of no return. 
“But it looks like Christmas, Mom!” she says holding it up proudly. 

But the damage was done. They couldn’t be pulled apart. They couldn’t be salvaged and placed in their correct containers as individual colors. There was no turning back now. No going back to the way it used to be. The dough was forever changed. 

“You’re going to be really upset when you’ve smashed them all together so much that all you have is brown!” my mom says. “And then we won’t be able to buy you more. And put the lids on the ones you’re not using so they don’t dry out.” 

My sister shot my mom an annoyed look then made sure she slapped the proper lid back on the purple container. (How else would we know what color we were choosing when we played again?)

I shook my head as if to say, You know better than that and returned to fitting a yellow Play Dough bow around the bottom of a yellow braid on the creepy doll whose plastic “hair” was already yellow. 

I didn’t know why it was so important that the colors not be mixed (other than that brown or gray Play Dough was supposedly an unholy abomination to Play Dough lovers everywhere). I just knew that mixing them upset my mom. 

Looking back now, I realize how bizarre it was that she was so adamant about Play Dough segregation (and yes, I am acutely aware of the racial symbolism to be found in this story, but that’s not where I’m going with this). Maybe it was because we lived well below the poverty level, and she was trying to preserve what little we had. Maybe she struggled with needing things to be a certain way (in fact, I know this was a struggle in many areas of her life). Or maybe her mom never let her mix Play Dough colors either. 

Whatever the reason, I was unaware that this was not a universal rule among all Play Dough enthusiasts until I saw others mixing colors. Even then, I stuck with my upbringing and kept mine separate. 

When I come back to present day and watch my little girl having the time of her life on a cheap mat with a few balls of dough, I realize something. I’m the mom now. I get to decide the Play Dough rules, and I won’t hear my mom’s exasperated sighs or scolding because “the red one dried out, and now we can’t get more!” 

So, I resolved to do the unthinkable. I took a green ball of dough in one hand and a white ball of dough in the other and rolled them together until they were entirely inseparable and formed a marble-like pattern. 

And you know what? No one made me stop playing. No one yelled. I didn’t fall through the floor into the fiery pits of Play Dough Hell, and the world didn’t spin off its axis or collapse into itself. 

Instead, I was praised for my work: 

“Oh! Dat’s so pretty, Mom! Bitty play? Mine?”

I handed the swirly ball to my little one, and she exclaimed, “Oh wow!” and promptly squished it between her tiny fingers. 

I suddenly realized an element that had been missing in my rigid upbringing: Impulsivity. 

While it is true that it is the parents’ job to teach their children to control their impulses, completely stifling impulsivity can also stifle creativity and lead to anxiety over such trivial things as mixing colors of Play Dough.  

Give yourself permission to be impulsive. Stop conforming to an idea that someone has for you and your life. This is your life, your work time, your play time. Free yourself from your anxiety-inducing inhibitions and mix those colors with wild abandon. You will be a happier person for it.  

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