Basking In The Euphoria Of A GOOD Haircut.

I went out and got a haircut….and I love it!! Let me tell you, I hate haircuts with the fiery passion of a million burning suns. I'm just not a fan of telling a complete stranger (that really isn’t listening to me anyway) a gestured version of the perfect haircut that is pictured in my mind…Call me crazy, but the concept is just a little whack. I usually get a really short “bob” haircut and then spend 8-9 months letting it grow out until it irritates me and I feel like shaving it off a’la Brittney Spears. Any who, I had 8 inches snipped off and I don’t look like a freak!! It was a good day.

When I go in for my yearly chop-off I usually have 8+ inches to cut off and the gal doing the cutting looks completely terrified and uncertain…not exactly the traits you look for in someone who is wielding a pair of sharp scissors in one hand and your hair in another. The conversation between the hairstylist and myself goes something like this: “Look, you’re not performing surgery here, I just want a short haircut. Can you do that?...Don’t worry, it’ll grow back. ” It’s like I’m talking some knife wielding lunatic off a ledge, only instead of taking the sharp implement away from the person, I’m tightening their grip around it. “Just do it, it’ll be ok… ” And after that, the real tragedy happens. I end up with some kind of horrific haircut which then requires me to spend ridiculous amounts of money on hats, bandannas, clips, and barrettes. It’s a sad, vicious cycle. I’m not exactly sure what happens to the hairstylist initial fear…but man, it disappears right quick as soon as my locks hit the floor! Suddenly I become the perfect head on which to try out a new, bold look. The levels of fugly that have graced my dome is the stuff of legends. I’ve sported a retro-sheek mullet; an a-symmetrical Rosie O’donell-esque nightmare; a bell-shaped “Librarian Special" ...the list is tragically endless. But THE WORST goes to one I got 2 years ago. I asked for bangs, and she decided it was a brilliant idea to have them start at the TOP of my head—in LAYERS for the love of Zeus!!! Really nice, it looked like I had a small, furry woodland creature glued to my forehead. Oh the horror of such haircut carnage...all in the name of vanity.

To prove how happy [and shocked] that I experienced a non-vomit-inducing haircut experience, I am posting a picture of my normal, boring haircut. That's how brave I'm feelin'...

Fathers Day...

Of Giants and Daughters
circa 1998 ?
Apá, do you remember how
My
Eyes
Saw
You
before these poems were born?
I’m sure they were pools of adoration,
Pleased to see you always,
I’m sure
These poems weren’t always this dangerous
This ready to wage war against you,
your censure and silence thick with indignation
And those avalanches of criticism
that never failed to bury me self doubt
Against your refusal to appreciate these words
bleeding with self-sacrificing effort to patch together
the love triangles of all these Mothers and Sons
Daughters and Fathers
These restless poems searching
for what two elements came together,
what synthesis took place to form this complex compound
that is you
I recognize in my dimmest memories, tugging at my braids
Painting the fenceless horizon inside my eye lids
while I stood in the protection of your shadow
But it grew too dark there
What you allowed me to see was not enough
The storms of your temper became too difficult to navigate
So, I sailed away and you never looked back
Then or since
I’ve searched for others to fill the foot prints you left behind
But there aren’t enough giants in the world

A Disturbing Introduction To The First Amendment

4:45 Wednesday afternoon. It had been a long, frustrating day and it wasn’t even over yet. I had been late to everything; late getting up, late dropping off kids, late to work, late picking up kids, and now late to my doctors appointment.

I was desperate for the traffic lights to simultaneously turn green so that I could reach the uninterrupted freedom of Highway 1. It was in this frustrated state of mind that I overlooked the man standing at the corner, to the right of me. It was in this frustrated state of mind that the message on his homemade sign didn’t quite register…until the sound of the horn from the car behind me interrupted my daze. Did I just read that correctly? Wait…what? I was in the process of mentally digesting what my eyes had just read when Sofia said, “That man…that man with the sign, did you read it? Why did it say that? That’s not OK, is it Mama?? Can’t he get in trouble?”

I’d seen The Man With The Sign earlier that morning on the other side of town when I was rushing to get Sofia to school on time. I was barely able to make out what the white sign said as I sped down the street, “LETS BE TOLERANT” it said in stenciled black letters. Yeah, we should be, I thought to my self as his existence quickly vanished from my mind. Fast forward to 4:45 in the afternoon and the fury boiling inside my belly and the questioning confusion from Sofia that I was not ready to appease. I pulled into a parking lot, made a too fast U-turn and headed back towards The Man With The Sign. There was a warm deafening in my ears, as if I had been sealed in a jar, and the prickly sweat forming at the back of my neck made me anxious. I was ignoring Sofia’s questions; I think maybe I momentarily forgot that she was even there. All I was thinking about was seeing that sign again…

There he was. I pulled into the Starbucks parking lot adjacent to the sidewalk he was milling about on. I sat staring at the same sign I had seen that morning, the side that beseeched such an encouraging, hopeful message. I sat there waiting for him to turn sideways, or to twirl the sign….And there it was. My breath caught in my throat. The sign, like some version of Dr Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde, had on its flip side a message so frightening and disturbing that it left me speechless. The sign read: “ADULT W/CHILD SEX IS OK” in bold black letters. I felt sick, the broken girl inside me wanted to hurt him…But the real girl pulling at my arm stopped me. I felt sick and I wanted to go home.

Sofia is 8 years old and her knowledge of sex is fuzzy at best. She knows it involves touching and kissing and grown ups—and that’s about it, nothing technical. She’s also had the strangers, bad touching vs. good touching conversation. In her mind, the sign and her knowledge of what sex is, just wasn’t computing. I had to snap out of my fury and attend to her questions…and she had plenty. She wanted to know why the gathering crowd was mumbling “he could say what ever he wants” if what he was saying was bad? She wanted to know how he knew it was ok. “When you know something it’s because you’ve done it, right? Does that mean…” she asked. *sigh*

Yes, to an extent you can say what you want, it’s called Freedom of Speech…
Yes, what he was saying was bad, but saying and doing are two different things…
And what I could tell was the most difficult for her to comprehend was the insinuation of the sign’s message. Sofia took my conversations about “good touch/bad touch” as a theoretical concept NOT as a reality. “Then it does happen??” Yes. I did my best. Days like this, I have very little faith in my parental abilities…or in humanity.

By the end of the day, Sofia still seemed preoccupied by the days’ events and I was wishing she had never read that damn sign. I could tell everything was still unraveling inside her brain. My brain was exhausted from coming up with luke-warm answers to her burning questions and my body was tense with memories that I wish would leave me be. Yes, days like this remind me why I have such little faith in so many things.

Sights & Sounds

I was a chaperone for Sofia's field trip to Point Lobos. I wanted to record some ocean sights & sounds for her because she was so awe struck by what she saw, but time ran away from me (especially when you have a bunch of 2nd graders to look after.) I was only able to record a few seconds of it and I was about to delete it from my camera when I came across this post....So here you go Laurie, I wish it was longer (and sunnier!) and I know it's only a temporary fix for your need to "record for infinity the music of the beach" but it should hold you over until you get there.

FEAR

At around 8:30 pm on Friday night, the lights went out. Only my son and I were awake.

“Mama, what’s happening…”
“It’s OK, buddy. The lights went out…follow my voice.”
“Mama…” there was a fearful trembling in his voice. “Mama, I can’t see you!”
“It’s OK; I’ll come to you, stay where you are.”

Joaquin is 4 years old and dreadfully afraid of the dark. He held on to me as tight as his thin arms could muster while I went around lighting candles in our home. He burrowed into my side as I sat on the sofa with him. I softly reassured him that everything was the same--that the lack of light had not affected the composition of his world; his toys were in the same place, his sister was still safely sleeping, and I was still there to comfort him. “I bet if you close your eyes, you could find your way around easily…Everything’s just where you last saw it. Remember where you are and that you’re safe…” But my words did little to comfort him; my reasoning could not penetrate the fear. The candles’ dancing shadows were taunting, the quiet too suspicious, and the darkened corners of objects and walls too abysmal to look at.

As he fell asleep on my lap I thought about his fear. How quickly this random plunge into blackness shattered his knowledge and trust of his surroundings…and how we never really outgrow it. We’re all familiar with those times we lose our bearings and fear grips us by the throat, immobilizing us. I thought about the paralyzing fear we all get when plunged in the dark (via a tragedy, a failure, the unfamiliar), forgetting that we’ve been here countless times before, forgetting the lessons of our last visit. I thought about how our memories of personal courage become so weak and unconvincing …how in absence of that memory, we search for external sources of courage, trust and reason. We lose trust in ourselves, we lose our ability to remind ourselves we always come out on the other side.

The power came back on around midnight. I walked around blowing out all the candles and tried to find my way in the dark…trusting my memory of how to get there, trusting in my ability to keep going until I do.

Here's To Good Friends

HollyGL, this one's for you...because good friendships know no distance.

With A Little Help From My Friends -- The Beatles

Thirteen, Fourteen.

I lay on warm earth, cradled between knee-length blades of summer grass, the sky bulging with cotton clouds idling by. I was heavy with hazy noontime sleepiness and the sunshine was draped over and around me like a blanket. The tingling hum of bees and ants and birds and petals unfurling was on my skin.

Close by, there was the sound of feet patting up the sandy slope. The sound of labored breaths exiting parched lips. The sound of dry leaves and twigs being crushed and kicked. A Boy Of Fifteen, long, lean and toasted golden by the sun. Like a sapling, I emerged from my cradle of earth and watched him move about under the lacy shadows of the old oak trees. He held on to a rope dangling from the branch, ran a few steps, picked up his long legs and swung wide through the air like some exotic bird. Letting go of the rope, he leapt in mid-flight and landed gracefully in a small pile of leaves. He began to walk away.

“He’s not here…” I called out to him. He turned, slowly it seems. “He went out with my dad.” He turned and stared off towards my house and then back the way he came.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he walked towards me. I watched his figure step out from the shade and into the radiance of my day. I shrugged my shoulders and looked up at the pulsating blue of the sky. I sat on the flattened grass again and the Boy Of Fifteen sat too. No words made it past my lips but somehow that tingling hum made its way inside me; to my fingers and my belly and my toes and the column of my spine. I held his gaze as he held my face in his hands, the air turned into honey when his lips touched mine. Heat drowned my ears, filled my pores...filled and emptied me like a tide. And in that moment I understood…the meaning of the moon, recognized the warmth of the sun, understood a blossom’s invitation. This Boy Of Fifteen gave me my first taste of spring.