From Hair to There

January 2013

For as long as I can remember

my hair has always been 

a prized possession

and an indicator 

of my emotional state.

When I was little 

it hung down to my waist

and my Grandma Maggie would

sit me down every afternoon 

to comb and curl 

and fasten with giant elastic ponytail holders.

The unwieldy holders 

with the big colorful balls

that would regularly snap from around my hair,

hit her knuckles 

and squeeze an "Ay!!!!"

from under her breath.

I'd sit with my drying curls in my hands

and watch "Facts of Life"

before going to play GI Joe

with my cousin Kevin.

My mom kept my hair long

and treated it with 

the most expensive shampoos and conditioners.

A luxury I didn't truly appreciate

until decades later 

when I lived on my own

and could only afford Suave.

The first time my dad took me to get a haircut

I told the girl I wanted it to my shoulders.

My dad begrudgingly gave in

wholly regretting it later 

when my mom met us at the door

with tears and shrieks
and

"Oh my god you're HAIR!!!!!"

I was 11
and it was my first rebellion.

At 14 I dyed it burgundy
with an ancient box of Clairol

and she grounded me for a month,

and when I was a senior in high school

and the cheer coach quit
at the beginning of the year,

I felt angry and abandoned

and like I needed a new identity.

So I cut off a foot and a half of hair

and said goodbye to my cheer ponytail

forever.

The summer before college,

in love with Paul but feeling

like my skin didn't fit,

I left the Newport beach house

my friend's parents rented every summer,

walked to a local salon

and paid $100 to cut it all off.

My poor boyfriend
wondered what had happened to me.

As the years have worn on

it's been every length

and every color.

Long and short and in between.

Dec. 2009 - My favorite 3 year old girl is also in this picture

Jet black and sassy.

February 2006 - mine and my BFF's best hair day ever

A reddish Louis Brooks interpretation.

 

Summer 2011 - Ugh with the cigs

I am secretly addicted

to cutting my own bangs in the mirror

at midnight 

with fabric scissors

and having to get them fixed 

by a professional

when the sun rises

the next day.

With both babies

the mixture of hormones and prenatals

made for long luxurious locks,

but without fail I would come 

to take shears out on myself

when months later
I couldn't make sense of anything

let alone what to do with long hair.

The last time I dramatically cut my hair

James was 10 months old

and my relationship with his father

was a mess of knots.

I wanted to cut away the past,

the energy,

the memories of some pretty tough years.

For months I had pleaded with my girlfriend Renee to chop it,

but believing it only to be a case of the baby insanity,

she refused.

Finally after months of my relentless insistence,

she caved and cut my bra band length hair into a pixie.

March 2009 - That baby face is killig me

It's been growing for almost 4 years

and I can't remember the last time I dyed it.

I'm sprouting grays

and sometimes I fantasize

about doing something crazy

with the cut and color,

but truly the desire is not there.

Sometimes I think it's because now I'm boring

(which I kind of am)

but also I think it may be because I'm content.

A Parallel

My Jiminy Cricket

Hello ye neglected blog!

A million things and hours in traffic,

Halloween party planning and throwing,

tae kwon do belt testing,

Cub scout joining,

no internet having

and old laptop owning.

All that and more

and you'll understand

why it is I can't always get
to this spot right here.

This place to stop and collect my thoughts.

I live 27 years in 24 hours
and I make dinner and check homework
and read Harry Potter before bed
and kiss my boyfriend as we pass each other
in opposite directions
on the way in or out of the house.

I fill my mom role
and my employee role
and my girlfriend role
and sometimes it all just smears together
and I cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Sometimes who I am as Christina
crashes and burns
into who I am
as my boys' mommy.

Tonight Lucas looked me dead in the eye
and told me he was disappointed in me.

"I can't believe you're still smoking."

And I am.

I do.

After years and years of trying to stop
I haven't been able to stay stopped
and my kid is not ok with it.

Earlier this year I promised I would quit.

And I did.

And I had.

Until a few months ago when
I found myself back at the start.

I never smoke around my children
but he's on to me.

Looking in my hiding spots,
calling me out on what I thought were
"top secret, kids in bed, late night" smokes.

My son is learning about drugs at Red Ribbon Week
and he knows cigarettes cause cancer
and tonight he said,

"Mom...I don't want you to die."

And he meant it.

And it killed me.

And I told him what he said is important,
and that I'm not going anywhere,
and that I know smoking is terrible
and want to quit but it's not that easy.

That I'm not
not quitting
because I don't understand
or care about his feelings.

That I love him so much
and I'm sorry he feels this way
and I want to make it better.

And then...
I snuck my cigarettes out of my glove box when he wasn't looking.

Because
IT'S NOT THAT EASY.

Every so often I'll sense
an obvious collision between my identity as a mother
and that of my 29 year old self.

Tonight was one of them.

When it happens,
it leaves my stomach in flips.

Last month we finally
signed Lucas up for Cub Scouts,
and the night of his first den meeting
I read an article about a 16 year old boy
being denied his Eagle Scout award
because he's gay.

And boom...confliction.

I don't know the right or wrong of it.

Where I end and they begin.

The magical formula
of maintaining autonomy
whilst mothering two children.

The grace necessary
to endure my sons' faces
as their mother's veil of perfection
begins to shift.

Knowing it will eventually fall.

B.F.F. (Or Not)

I went to an all-girls Catholic high school.

An idea most people meet with

a look of horror,

but I loved it.

I mean not initially.

Initially I was convinced

that my parents hated me

and never wanted  me to find a boyfriend.

I got pregnant anyway. Sorry mom!

The dress code was a uniform

with "free dress" days

that allowed for pedal pushers.

Pedal. Pushers.

I mean

the fact that we had to wear penny loafers

was a degree of fashion torture

that can probably be blamed

for my adulthood obsession with heels.

And I still remember

getting a detention

for constantly wearing red nail polish

to my sophomore algebra class.

I'm currently rocking lavender grey nails.  Take that!

But once I settled into

the dude free uniformed existence

I loved it.

Mostly I loved it

because I had a host of girlfriends.

Originally there were 17 of us,

then 12,

and then 8 plus the one

who'd moved away.

A motley crew

of freshman driftwood

that somehow glommed onto to one another

on the concrete

outside of the home ec room

sometime around September '95.

17 years ago. Whoa.

Some of them

had already been friends for years

but not me.

I was the only one

from my group of elementary friends

that had gone on

to that high school.

  

I remember Brianne and Kierra,

older, more experienced sophomores,

telling us that it wouldn't always be this way.

That we would all go on

in different directions someday.

If you can count your closest friends on one hand,

you're lucky.

I shook my head.

No, no, not us,

I thought.

We're bonded forever and ever,

the end.

I don't know

how we all landed together

but we did,

and we stayed that way

through 4 years of high school.

We were

cheerleaders and homecoming queens,

soccer players and ASB leaders,

choir members and drama kids.

Drinkers and pot smokers,

mean girls (to others and each other)

and community volunteers,

journal writers and note passers.

Dichotomies and contradictions,

blondes and brunettes,

little girls growing up together.

We bore witness to each other’s

first loves,

heartbreaks,

car accidents,

and piercings.

It was a mine field but we managed to plant roots.

4 years of roots.

Roots that stayed on

after graduation

and boyfriends

and different colleges.

Roots that lay dormant

as we drifted in and out

of those first post-high school years.

Phone numbers I kept

even after I got caught in a rip tide of

new friends and bad habits.

Phone numbers I called

with the news that I was pregnant at 20

and wanted my oldest friends

at the baby shower.

And they showed up.

They showed up

and I was so glad

to see the faces that had known me

before I was anything else.

They were there when Lucas was born

and they were at most of his birthday parties.

8 years of roots.

Our lives sort of kicked into high gear after that.

Weddings (5 of them!) and babies (3 of those!),

new houses and engagements,

reason after reason

to get together

and just be girlfriends.

Bridal showers and birthdays,

a weekend on the Russian River,

and a boat ride on the Peninsula.

Dinners and Christmas parties,

housewarmings and life, life,

lots of life!

I relished in having longtime friends.

Knew how lucky we were

to have so many years behind

and so many years ahead of us.

12 years of roots.

It'll be 2 years since my initial blackballing from that group.

A summer of weddings that weeded me out.

It started with phone calls

going unanswered and not returned,

birthday dinners I was excluded from without my knowing.

It was a tearful Christmas cocktail party where

I admitted my missteps

and offered my apologies,

sobbing quietly in the kitchen

and left painfully unforgiven.

It was my first lesson in:

"I was wrong" + "I'm sorry"

(does not always)

= everything is better

Losing a friendship is kind of like a death;

disorienting and emotionally charged.

Now multiply that times three

and throw in the sting

of knowing harsh things

have been said about you,

and it's pretty much a shit sandwich.

It has been one of the most brutal experiences.

Ever.

And I know brutal.

14 years of roots.

Every story has two sides,

and I only know my own truth.

The truth is I tried to be there as much as I could.

I tried my best

with 2 young children,

and a failing relationship,

and a full load at school,

and 3 jobs.

Admittedly sometimes my best sucked.

Sometimes I was selfish

and sometimes I was crazy

and sometimes I tried to please too many people

and sometimes I made the wrong choice.

16 years of roots.

According to “The Five Stages of Grief”

I’m in acceptance,

but I’m not sure.

Denial and anger

(and why isn’t sadness a stage?!?!)

still float to the surface now and then.

Mostly because try as I might to

 hidedeleteWTF everyone from Facebook

I still get to see the shit I’m left out of.

And it sucks.

Thanks Mark Zuckerberg!

One of the greatest resources of perspective

in all of this

has been the friends

old and new

that have stayed by my side

through the crazy.

  

The ones I knew

wouldn't punish me

if I came up short

in the game of tit for tat.

The ones who patiently waited out my worst

and taught me how to be a better friend.

And I could say something

about being forever indebted to those girls,

but these friends don’t believe

in debts.

Truth.

Sometimes the truth makes me uncomfortable.
Rattles a part of me that says it's not ok.

Not ok to be a single, never-been-married mother.
Not ok to have two children from two different fathers.

The voice that says I was raised better.

The judgements I used to hold against those kinds of women.
The judgements I'm afraid people hold against me.

The fear that someday
my own children will judge my choices.

It is my own arrogance that holds me hostage.
This belief that I should be something.

Something I'm not.

Something I'll never be.

Sometimes the truth embarrasses me.
Makes me feel bad.
Sad.

Sometimes nosey women at parties

point out how different my boys look.

"Oh! One with curly hair...

and one with straight!"

"Oh! One light and one dark!"

Yes she actually said that.

My sweet guy

trying to save me from her intrusions,

"They're half brothers."

And I am crushed.

Because I never thought of them that way.
Because Lucas had never heard that term.

Because there is nothing half
about my brother and I

 and I want my boys to feel the same way.

2am on Christmas Eve.

Because saying anything invites more questions
and sometimes things are so complicated,
they are better left unsaid.

No
he's not my husband.

Yes
he is my boyfriend.

Yes
that is his dad.

No
not his dad,
his dad.

Well...
that's a long story.

And then right when my judgemental self
reaches a fever pitch in my own head

my truth becomes abundantly clear.

Ideal dynamic...no.

The absolute best version of this dynamic...yes.

Because these boys have no shortage of love.

Because I am
(and have always been)
surrounded by a village.

My parents.

His parents.

Nana to one and all.

Aunts and Uncles

that show up

and tie shoes.

Build Legos and cars.

Brothers vs. Brothers

Front yard football champs

Daycare providers and teachers

who love my boys.

And have cared a whole hell of a lot

about me too.

Girlfriends who have cheered me on

when my head was too loud.

"Christina...
If you're ok with it,
they'll be ok with it."

Listened to me cry

and not judged me

when I've had to bow out of friend duty for a minute.

A good man

who let's me say these things out loud

and trusts me enough

to share his own reservations.

These last few years

growing up

has meant the slash and burn

of all those little ideas and expectations.

Ripping apart the pages

of what my life was supposed to look like.

I think I've done that.

Burned it all right down to the ground.

And the best part...

even with my sometimes blinded,

smoke-filled eyes,

there are hands to hold on to.

Last week a girlfriend of mine said

I was oozing happiness.

And I am.

I mean..

how can I not?