“So are you going to write every day?”
“Um…no…well I mean I guess I can. I haven’t been. I guess I could…” This was my answer to the super hip Aveda girl completing my head and neck massage.
My idea behind blogging this year was purely to keep me real, to put out a public promise to my tribe and to have them keep me to it. I didn’t think about how this would work…details…details. To be honest there is a constant dialogue in my head—a rewind of my day complete with all the witty comebacks, the assertive statements, the blow up your theory in five words, thoughts that eluded me between the hustle and bustle of the day. So in an effort to release the “voices in my head” I bring to you…ta..da..da..da - regular blog posts. This particular announcement coincides with my 35 Project First—read on…
My father is loud. He is loud and jolly and has super rosy cheeks and a big round belly. I swear he is not Santa. He just has an indescribable joy for life and he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Ever. He doesn’t care when people can’t understand his accent or that his cars sounds like a jet coming down the street. He is passionate about everything he exerts the same passion talking about politics as he does when he tells you about sale prices at the grocery store. He is telenovela loud, dramatic, passionate and a bit macho. He has been my hero since the time I could remember. Growing up I called him Daddy never Papi. I ran to him when I was hurt, sad, tired. It was a party when I was with my dad; all yes’s almost never no’s, only go ask your mother. When I was a teenager we were Clash of the Titans he thought his way was the only way and I of course knew everything. My mother said we were too much alike me and my father. Cut from the same cloth. We even looked alike. Everyone commented about how I was my dad through and through, same round face, same round nose and maybe something similar in the eyes.
Imagine my surprise when yesterday I looked in the mirror and saw my mother staring back at me. My mother with the long oval face and long sharp nose and dainty features on my big round face. Then I realized it was my hair. I cut it short. Really. Really. Short. The shortest it’s ever been. Under all of that hair lays my mother.
Suddenly I felt warm, salty tears rolling down my chubby cheeks. It’s not what you think. This was pride. The same way that losing all those layers of hair revealed a piece of my mom, years of experience helped me really appreciate my mother. All of her sacrifices, her strength, her selflessness. I realized in that moment that I hoped that I didn’t just resemble her but that I could BE like her. I will admit that I have taken my mother for granted. I don’t just mean the little things. I mean the big things the fact that my mother doesn’t lie…can’t lie or that she is always polite to everyone and that she opens her home to everyone. She stills gets Christmas cards and phone calls from people who she met 30 years ago and barely speaks to.
I love that in her early seventies she plays on the swingset with my daughter and gets down in the garden with her to plant flowers. I love that she almost never wears makeup and has the softest most beautiful skin. I still need her when I’m sick and she coached me through my first labor. She doesn’t always say the right thing in fact sometime she’s either Yoda or “I told you so” but the kiss and hug that follows is filled with the love and understanding that I was looking for.
As a mother and a wife I understand her in a special way. It’s like looking back on that bully from grade school and understanding that there was much more beneath.
The day after I got my haircut a friend called me by my mother’s name and jokingly asked if I cut my fair to look like my mother…with a must be crazy look I answered…”Are you crazy?! Who would do that?!”
I would.
