The Braid

In about late September, I decided I would cut my hair after 22 plus years.  That's a big deal.  My old companion dog Jake would be astronomically aged, and he would've croaked at the thought.  So I speculate.. .

There are two primary reasons why I wanted to cut the hair, thick dark brown, and poorly groomed for many years.  The first reason was I lost my aunt, and the loss of her is significant to me.  This is a relative my family wouldn't talk too graciously about, if she were alive today.  She possessed character flaws, made the kind of choices and mistakes that had people questioning her parenting, and subsequently her approach to living.  You spoke under your breath in contempt because for the life of her, my aunt suffered from severe chronic lateness and was never really reliable.  But did I love this lady.  She was cheerfully and wearily always on my side, believed I could exercise an systemic disease in out bloodline if I maintained the choice to succeed, and witnessed my  broken past and made it a mission of hers to make sure I made it out in one piece.

It's a tempered love, surpassing seasons of life and the weather.  I admired her rash bad living. It represented a smeared and creative destructiveness I longed to play out.  I never aspired to make the choices she made, not because I couldn't live with them.  But rather, my conscience and humanity would die with them and it wouldn't be too hard to make them.  I learned to live with tension watching my aunt live.  How to handle disappointment and contempt.  How to be pitied like so much of my family did with her.  How to fail and be resilient.  She taught me about the lower parts of life and I loved her- immensely.

I grieved, bitterly and passionately.  So the hair was going.

The second reason was much more practical.  I felt ready for a change.  There were certain people I wanted out of my life.  Symbolically and silently I protested their presence, probably as much they protested mine.  This felt like the perfect opportunity to let them go.  They served no real purpose being in my orbit, so I thought.  It was what came after that I began to see the irony and my wishful thinking washed away in cosmic humor.  Some of those people linger in my world to teach me about grace and dignity.

My mother took it pretty hard when I informed her of the choice.  Culturally, I understood what I was doing, and figured no one would object too fiercely.  I still have the braid stowed away in a medicine pouch, ready to be properly handled, in whatever way my family deems necessary whenever I decide to drag my bad self home.

Healing.  Hope.  Change.  Growth.  Life.

Mostly I was surprised about how youthful I looked once the locks were gone.  But I definitely love my dome the way it is now, and every now and then, think about all those years with it.