We had red-orange “brick” linoleum in our kitchen at 902 East 9th Street, where I grew up. The pattern featured squares and rectangles of varying sizes, with gray, jagged “mortar” lines between them. My parents had that linoleum installed after we’d lived in the house for a while. It was part of a minimal kitchen redo, along with painting the cabinets and replacing the old wallpaper with sheetrock.

I liked that linoleum. It made the room look a little more rustic than it should have for a Dutch Colonial, but I didn’t care. Its richness pleased me in a way I couldn’t yet explain. I didn’t know then what I know now: that color and texture and pattern are important to me. At that time, I just knew that I liked it.

Flash forward sixty years.

I love a color-rich home surrounded by shapes, textures, and patterns that make me feel happy. The more saturated the color, the better I like it. Now I know that what I see has a real impact on how I experience life. I feel enriched by my visual environment.

I now understand that I intuitively knew, even as a child, what suited me. No one said, “Look how nice that dark red-orange floor looks in contrast to the light baseboard,” or, “Isn’t that color combination lovely?” I simply absorbed those details without the language to express them. That awareness was just part of my basic nature.

It is no surprise that I married a man whose whole life is about the visual experience.

Now I have the words to describe how I see.

I’m so glad.