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‘Getting your hair done is like punctuating with a semi-colon; everything that happens afterwards is somehow related to it.’

When I graduated three years ago, I had been growing out a pixie cut for a few months and it was in a very awkward place. I like to spend fifteen minutes in the bathroom in the morning, tops, and my preferred hair routine involves raking my fingers through it, adjusting the part, and combing out any knots. I had grown so frustrated that I knew it was time to go big or go home. 

I waited until I went home to Marseilles because there are three things you will always find on every street block in France: a bakery, a pharmacy, and a hair salon. The French do so many things exquisitely and hair is no exception: chez le coiffeur your head is massaged, you are offered an espresso, and nobody talks to you because who really wants to be talked to when they look like a drowned kitten?  

In any case, the owner of the salon laughed in my face when I told him I wanted an ’80s perm, and I didn’t really blame him because it was 2010 and every other woman in the salon was begging for stick-straight hair. “The curlier the better,” I insisted. One of the girls spent an inordinate amount of time in the back looking for the chemical solution. When she was wrapping my hair in the curlers, she asked me several times if I was sure this was what I wanted. 

“I’m not afraid,” I assured her, as if we were riding into battle together. The owner stood by watching, smoking cigarette after cigarette. 

When it was all over three hours later she squeezed my curls dry and turned me to face the mirror. She picked at my hair with a comb and the cloud of blonde grew and grew. She smiled. “This really suits you,” she said. 

“I know!” I said. 

I associate my first perm with so many good things: moving to Chicago, meeting wonderful people, and a summer sweltering with a humidity that multiplied the curls. I remember stepping fresh out of the shower in the morning, fluffing my hair with a towel, and walking out my front door ten minutes later feeling like a million dollars. 

I’m getting my second perm (PERM 2013!) tomorrow. My hair is much longer now, but life is so beautiful and we’re about to have another sweltering summer. There are going to be mornings drinking tea in front of the lake and sunny breakfasts and strolls through the farmer’s market.  There will be camping trips and picnics and naps in the sunshine. There are going to be long evening runs and refreshing morning swims. I will not have any time to spend in front of the mirror.

Getting over mono means unlimited toast and eggs fried in the good Wisconsin butter, flowers from a sweetheart, chamomile to soothe into sleep…

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six hundred and sixty-six ideas

Grief/Anger

What is grief?

From the moment I received the news, two years ago, that a close friend had passed away, I have felt almost nothing except anger. A sort of nebulous anger at the frailty of bodies, at medicines and operations that work for some and not for others, an unfair anger that enough research hasn’t been performed, that new discoveries haven’t been made.

Mostly, though, I am angry at a world and at communities that protect powerful abusers and ignore those who can’t speak for or protect themselves. I am angry at those who encourage others to remain silent when they’ve been hurt physically and emotionally by the very people who should have been their strongest supporters. I am angry for the sickly, misguided belief systems that promote suffering in silence and submitting to authority without question, systems that marginalize the people who most need help and love and support. 

What is grief? 

I have had to accept that my friend’s illness was incurable, that despite the doctors’ best efforts, there was very little they could do to slow or stop the progress of her disease. I have learned, like so many of us have had to, that there are limits to what human intelligence and skill can accomplish at this moment in time.

But I refuse to believe that there is a limit to human kindness, understanding and empathy. We don’t need to do more research to learn how to protect those who need our protection. We don’t need to make new discoveries to stand behind those who are being oppressed, no matter what it may cost our reputation or our “image”. 

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chamomile tea is spring in your cup

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their dorothea lange faces

Not Sure

if I’m feeling Baudelaire’s spleen or my own. 

Things I’ve Learned Since Getting Mono:

1. It’s a rite of passage. Everyone and their grandmother has had mono, most of them when they were teenagers. True to form, I’m the latest of all bloomers. But since everyone has had it, everyone has tidbits of wisdom to share. 
2. Mono sleep is the sleep I have always dreamed of getting: deep, dreamless, limp, and never-ending, sort of like the sleep you get when the room you’re in is a bit too warm and you can’t quite reach the surface of your afternoon nap. My bed has never been softer or my pillows deeper. My body melts into the mattress. When I wake up (hours later, though I thought I’d only just closed my eyes), I spend a good amount of time reclaiming various body parts from the beyond. 
3. Even without any discernible appetite, I have craved vinegar, chicken, and apples every day without fail.
4. Emergen-C is a gem of the highest order.
5. I have spent more time thinking about my spleen in the last five days than I have in my entire life. 
6. The internet spends more time explaining why people shouldn’t continue to think you only catch mono by kissing than giving any other sort of valuable information. Why so useless?
7. Did we need any more arguments in favor of hot baths and herbal tea? We didn’t, but why are you still resisting? 

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The Sick Child, Edvard Munch, 1885-86

Slowly

I’ve had the flu the beginnings of mono for the past two weeks. At first I didn’t take it seriously, sort of like when you are babysitting a kid and he keeps yelling for a drink of water after he’s gone to bed and you’re just trying to watch Netflix, and you do what you remember your parents doing and what you have seen all parents doing on television: you yell, “You had one right before bed, sweetie, go to sleep!” Except that he keeps yelling and his voice gets louder and more tearful and you consider calling the parents because maybe he has a rare medical condition that requires a glass of water precisely after he’s been put to bed. And then he appears around the corner of the stairs with a machete and says, “Stop popping the Advil and get into bed, I’m going to make you pay for this.” 

I don’t get sick very often so I’m not a good invalid: I get distracted from resting by all sorts of things, like needing to feel clean, needing to have a clean apartment, needing to have clean sheets. But what about the mail I haven’t checked the mail in days. The weather is so nice, taking a ten minute walk surely wouldn’t kill me. I don’t have any food in my refrigerator, I should pop over to the store. And then I’m on my way to work in the morning and I’m standing and feeling faint and it’s so hot and I just have to get out and lean over the railing of the platform and gulp the fresh air in-between trying to rid myself of my breakfast. 

“Ma’am,” yells the train conductor, because I was in the first car and he watched me bolt out of it. “Is this a medical emergency?” 

“No,” I said miserably, “I just need a drink of water.” 

He handed me a bottle of water. “You should go home.” 

Go home. Go home. But there is something about being sick that makes resting seem like the very last thing you want to do, because slowing down means you need to take yourself into account, puffy eyes and concave sour stomach and pale jutting cheekbones. You need to take your life into account, all the bits and pieces of pizza and late nights and wine and fun you’ve been having, and how you didn’t listen to your body when it said, Slow down, slow down, because slowing down would have meant a quiet you’re not sure you know how to handle anymore. 

And you have to learn to ask for help.

I didn’t take it gracefully or quietly. I took it crying and thrashing, and when the doctor mentioned that if I couldn’t keep food down or if it didn’t get better I’d have to spend the night in the hospital just to be sure, I took a long look at the quiet I’d been avoiding for the past two months. 

I’m stubborn, and it’s so easy to believe I’m the exception to a rule: I won’t get sick or injured or heartbroken. I’ve been okay for so long! And Advil! But as I listened to the fan swing overhead and the muffled traffic pass outside my apartment, I heard it: the quiet that says, all of these things will happen, and more, and knowing this will keep you peaceful, it will keep you humble, because you won’t live forever and you must be kind to yourself and others. You are weak, but weak in a way that makes you stronger because you can understand and empathize with others, and give them the benefit of the doubt when you don’t want to believe that they are as weak as you are.