Joyful Loss
Locks drift to the floor, landing hard. Eleven years I’ve cultivated this: you, more your own than mine. A small thing: a braid you couldn’t make yourself. A small thing you needed my touch for. Shorn, I fear, you will need it no more.
I mourn, joyful, and fiercely proud.
About this Short
As anyone in the Isle of Write Pub yesterday knows, my littlest baby girl got a haircut. That's her in the picture above, taking photos for her Black and White Challenge. So yeah, she's not a baby. But she's my baby even at eleven, just like her fifteen and eighteen year old brothers will always be my babies even though they are young men.
Moms get it.
Lily Rose has been such a joy. In many ways it wasn't until having a daughter that I truly began to understand "sisterhood" in the sense of kinship with women who aren't really kin, which is strange, I know. But raising her in a world of Harvey Weinsteins and Donald Trumps raised in me a longing for her to have a different experience as a woman than my own, which I touch on here. I spent years attempting to instill in her a sense of autonomy and self-respect, a sense of confidence and capability, and a willingness to choose what is right for her provided she does no harm to another.
All of which bit me beautifully in the ass yesterday. I was brushing out her hair to braid it, a routine I cherish. She is so independent that she rarely lets me do anything for her, and as the youngest, she is my last touchstone to those moments long ago when toddlers clung to me for comfort and crawled into our bed after nightmares. These few precious minutes when she stands and lets me gently untangle those knots... they are magical.
At least they were for me.
For her they were a misery. However careful and gentle I am there is always a snag or two, and really just the time spent having it done (longer, the more careful I am), is time she would rather be--well--doing anything else on earth. And as she winced and squirmed and I apologized, she said the dreaded words: "I want to cut my hair short."
More specifically she said, "I want to cut my hair short, but then everyone tells me, 'Oh never cut your hair, it's so beautiful!'" It's true. Strange women tell her this in public. Like touching random pregnant bellies uninvited, I think this is an urge women should resist.
The radical individualist who lives within erupted to the surface. "It's your damn head, you do what you want with it!"
And so she did. And I am so proud of her for doing what she wanted and not what she feared others wanted of her. And I'm so happy for her because she absolutely loves her short, short hair. But it is so bittersweet, losing that small thing: that braid she couldn't make for herself.
Check her out, she's
and you can read her confidencein her BNW Photo description. I love this young woman!
Many thanks to 
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