haircut's & dreams

I have stopped dreaming about my mother since I cut my hair. 

my hair being chopped

Cut my hair into a short tight bob that slides slightly above my chin. Most of the time I loved my long hair, it flowed down my back and seemed to give me strength when I needed to hide or cry. But it also felt, lately, since my mother’s death, that it was tangled up in the power she held over me. It hung limp down my back; and was so often in my way of late, that I kept it in a constant top-knot on my head. Then I had the flu over Christmas, which prevented N, the boys & me from flying out to visit our families in Colorado.  I had desperately needed to know I was returning there when mom died, but then we couldn’t go and I was in bed and sick and sore and my chest hurt that it was easier to sleep than be awake and so I slept. so deep.  So deep that my hair stuck to my nostrils and caught in my mouth and felt scratchy and heavy and I couldn’t escape how tangled I felt up in it. Three days after Christmas I pulled my body up off the bed I share with N, put on some clothes that the dogs had only slept on for half a day, and drove to the salon and had them cut off my hair. 2 feet. of hair. And somewhere in the piles of locks on the floor, were the dreams I had about mom. They slipped off my back and were swept up, and put out into the rubbish pile.

Me, kissing B. I have...
short hair!

It is not that it is a bad thing, on the contrary, there is much that is good that this act of cutting off and sweeping out, it was just so quick and I am still adjusting. it was just so quick and I am still adjusting.  Things happen and then you have to adjust. Mom’s illness and subsequent death was so quick, I think my brain and my heart have not caught up with themselves and I trying to sort it all out. There are days to pile it into a brown bag and take it out to the trash and there will be other days when it needs to be sorted: recycle, glass, cardboard, compost, keep, hope, hold.

Short hair & a kind of smile....

 In this new year, I am hoping that writing and blogging will help me scoop up the past and sort it all out. Help me to be more present Here. Instead of re-tracing the lines of the past.  This present, this here, in all these little moments, learning to take care of myself: taking care of my body, and my soul. Until next time loverlies.