The online test was supposed to diagnose my ability to see colors. I stared at the screen and searched for the number hidden in a forest of little circles. I passed that one. I am not color blind. Then, a few days ago I took one that was supposed to identify a minority of humans who can see colors that almost no one else can see. Another test offered to determine whether my eyesight is acute enough for a military pilot. I would feel enormous pride if I were found to possess exceptional perception of color. I do not. I am deeply disappointed when I fail such evaluations. In a rainbow, I see colors from the violet through red, and the ordinary hues between that most people see. I easily distinguish between red and green—the most common form of color blindness. I can nearly always detect subtle variation in color. My perception of the color red fades first in waning daylight, just as it does for all humans.

My eyesight is normal, at least insofar as what colors I see. The rods in the back of my eyes which distinguish light and darkness are likely fading as I age so that my vision at dusk is less clear than it was when I was a girl. Most people lose some degree of night vision as they age. It is why my husband Gary still does not like to drive in the dark. It is another reason why the elderly are more at risk to stumble on their way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And it is also a contributor to older people giving up reading. They cannot see as well without brighter task lighting, but they fail to connect their struggles reading with poor lighting in their homes.

The loss of rods in the retina can be addressed with a lamp. The loss or lack of cones, the light-sensitive cells that read colors, is more problematic. Cones allow people to distinguish between the three colors of light: red, green, and blue. Some color vision, like light vision, is lost with age, and the ability to see color accurately may be lost due to trauma or illnesses such as leukemia or Parkinson’s. Cataracts, for example, impact color perception, turning skies pallid and strange. (The sky turned back to sky blue after Gary’s cataract surgery.) When cataracts are surgically corrected, color vision returns to normal, but most color blind people are born with a lifelong handicap. And for about one in twelve men in the world but only about one in two hundred women, it is genetic.

An adaptation of our diurnal ancestors was color vision. Scientists assume that early lifeforms were nocturnal and completely color blind. As we woke to the day, our senses included color. Birds have a rich range of perceived colors and perhaps that is understandable in species that rely on color to navigate, eat, and find mates. This makes me wonder about owls. As nocturnal birds, do they lack color vision? The cone cells that detect color are blind in low light.

Among people of color, especially from sub-Saharan Africa, color blindness is uncommon, while among white people, especially from Scandinavia, the incidence is higher, especially among men. About nine million British citizens have some degree of color blindness and nearly all of those people are men who inherited the condition from their parents. Men are at a disadvantage because, while blue is inherited on a non-sexual chromosome, the red and green color-perceiving cones are carried only on the X chromosome, and thus men have only one shot at inheriting what they need to see what I can still see quite clearly. Christmas colors.

Ordinary color blindness limits a human’s ability to see one or more of the three colors of light—red, green, and blue. Most people who suffer from color blindness are blind to two of these colors, but only half are moderately or severely color blind. The most extreme color blindness, no color vision at all, is extremely rare. In my county in northwest Oregon of less than forty thousand people, almost two thousand are likely to be color blind. These people are not truly blind to color, instead they have some impairment of their ability to see the full range of colors. With an overwhelmingly white (90%) and significant Scandinavian population, this is not surprising. The defect is most common in people with European ancestry.

About half of these local citizens, shy of 2000 people, color blindness is moderate to severe—they do not see a particular color well or at all. Of the people likely to be colorblind in my county, 250 would have some level of the most common form of red-green color blindness that confuses those colors (deuteranomaly), about 50 would lack some degree of red perception (protanopia), 50 would lack blue (tritanopia), and in our richly wet and verdant landscape, 50 would see green trees as washed out, yellow, or gray (deuteranopia). Perhaps in my state of almost 4 million people, about 180,000 people have some degree of color blindness. More significant. 120 people might have true color blindness (rod monochromacy) and are unable to distinguish any color at all.

Does color blindness make a difference day to day? A fair percentage of people even in first world countries survive youth completely unaware that they see less than their peers. I recall a television show I was invited to participate in as a teenager. One of the other teen panelists announced just before we went on the air that he had enlisted that day and discovered he was color blind. “I didn’t even know,” he said. I asked him the color of the dress I was wearing. He looked it over carefully and replied, “Sort of beige?”  All these years later, I can guess he had protanopia, the form of color blindness that limits perception of red and would have made my bright orange-juice-colored dress appear pale muddy yellow.

Most color blindness is a mild inconvenience. Even with his limitation, the new recruit had learned the light at the top of the signal indicated he needed to stop. And then at eighteen he understood he would struggle forever to determine whether a steak was raw or cooked, whether a Marine uniform was merely dirty or smeared in blood.

That boy had gone through most of his teens unaware that the rest of the world saw something different from what he saw.

This is not unusual. Researchers find that many children fail to notice that their vision is hindered, and those children who do are most likely to disguise their handicap. Parents may note their child making unusual, perhaps creative color choices with paint sets, and these children may struggle to identify colors. The child may complain of headaches or smell his food because he cannot tell from color what he is offered on his plate.

The conversation with my colorblind peer must have had an impact on me, because it was about that time that I was first tested for color blindness myself. I had not shown any symptoms of limited perception. I think I asked for the test. The doctor brought out a series of cards with variously sized and colored dots, one similar to the original Ishihara test invented in 1917. Slight color differences revealed numbers on each card. I was shown only a few out of the stack—Do you see a number? I did. This one? Another? Then the doctor declared my vision normal and put the cards back into their folder. I recall being disappointed that I was not allowed to look at all of the cards. Such tests are still used today to identify color perception.

Color blindness can create challenges in reading a map or recognizing whether someone is sunburned in time to warn them; they may not see the difference between a blue-eyed dark blonde and a green-eyed redhead, or be able to use color-coded test strips for water quality. A salad might have the appetizing hue of shredded cardboard. Most people cope, but how would I have placed my crayons in rainbow order without normal color perception? This distresses me. Did I embarrass some grade school boy by pointing out his colors were out of order, when he was himself unable to see that order? Worse, how would a colorblind person distinguish red lights or others warnings if there were not additional cues such as words or location. LEDs might all look the same. A red warning light might look identical to the green one assuring that everything it fine.

Physical capacity to see color is at the basis of much of what I do each day. I am deeply invested in color—the colors I paint my walls, the clothes I choose to wear, the play of hue and value in patterns, the way daylight alters everything. I enjoy subtleties of the jar of hundreds of agates plucked from the shore, the bright Sharpies in an orange tea mug on my desk, the handpainted yarn I weave. I would miss color. My world would be immeasurably impoverished without it.

For my entire childhood, my family’s only television was black and white. I did not miss color then, and indeed films were still made in black and white. We went to a family friend’s house to watch The Wizard of Oz in color, and the instant Dorothy opens the door, I noted the technical flaw. The door itself turns from gray to muddy brown. How old would I have been? Seven, eight? I understood immediately how the trick was done—it is not that everything past the door is in color, but that everything is abruptly filmed in color—maybe that is why there was nothing overwhelmingly magical in my memory of that experience. I went home to watch our black and white set without feeling deprived. Color was everywhere: in the carpet, my mother’s glass mosaics and enamels on copper, and just outside our door, the world was always in color.

But I do not see everything there is to see. What colors I can see comprise only a narrow band in the entire range of the colors that exist. Insects see a far broader range of colors invisible to my eyes, and though dogs are famously colorblind, my dog can see in the dark while I am tripping over furniture.

Still.

What I see is not all that I receive. My connections to colors are more complicated. Pale blue and and green and gray and glowing white are the colors of my sky and the sea outside my window, a soothing mix of gentle hues sometimes at war with the weather, with wind and lightning and raging surf. Green is the color of trees and growing things, and I see it wherever I look, because this is the coast of Oregon. The sun might be yellow, but I do not see it up in my sky today. Sunsets are most often glistering orange, while a sunrise wraps pink a full circle around my horizon. Violet is fading bruises and the yarn under my hands.

What I see is what is there to my human eyes, and also everything else I have ever seen that shares the scent, shape, texture, and color of that surface.

Red is the color of blood and lipstick and Oklahoma roses. My own blood dripping down from my knee to white ankle socks, my grandmother’s thick red lipstick, the roses Papa planted along the driveway. When I see a octagon sign, I don’t need red or even to see the letters to know I must stop. Green is home, the long-sleeved dress I loved as a child, trees, and tight furls of opening pine needles. My vision is not special, not rare or strange. A tiny percentage or perhaps even most other women may have, along with their double dose of X chromosomes, the extra ability to perceive colors no man can.

Recent studies find some women expand the seven hues most people identify in a rainbow to include dozens more. These colors are mostly a conflagration of greens—green is go—and that would be something to see.

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