by Patti
As of this morning I am officially the mother of a junior high kid. I know I've talked about it several times on this blog. I've lamented its impending doom; the fact that my baby is now a young lady; the complicated emotions surrounding this bittersweet milestone. But now? It's here. It's really, really here. And at this very moment, she is boarding a school bus, her backpack dangerously heavy with notebooks and pencils and expandable 13-pocket folders, and her father is waving goodbye to her. And she is turned away from the window, talking to her friends, even though every fiber of her 11-year old being wants to press her nose against the glass and wave back.
A few days ago, S sat down on a stool in our kitchen and got ready for a haircut. M, the family hairdresser, tried to talk her out of the choppy layers she begged for him to cut into her hair, explaining that her curly hair - the very hair that he curses every morning as he tames it back with a dollop of gel - was not the best candidate for the style she wanted. "But I'm not a kid anymore, papi! I want something cool! Pleeease?"
Moments before, when S was still in the shower, I had prepared M for this conversation. I reminded him that, as much as he adored her ridiculously gorgeous, long locks, they were not his."You need to let her choose her own style. She wants to experiment." He didn't like it, but he did it. His scissors reluctantly went into action, and inches and inches of curls floated to the floor.
He finally finished, and I clapped with excitement. "Oh, honey! It looks GREAT!" She looked immediately more mature - more "edgy". She ran to the bathroom, and her voice carried her approval through the house. "I LOVE IT!" She ran back into the kitchen, a grin eating her face whole. "Thanks, Papi!" She hugged him tightly, smiling into his chest.
The next morning she woke up and walked into my bathroom, where I was getting ready for the day. Her hair? Was a disaster. The curls puffed to the heavens and corked widly out to the sides. "Mom?" Her eyes begged me to help her. I immediately swung into action, weilding a comb and cream and explaining to her how she could fix her hair in the morning, promising her that once it got "used to" the new cut, it wouldn't be so hard to tame. Within minutes, her hair was back to its golden crown of glory; the curls fat and defined, the layers giving them a style meant for one going into junior high.
Last night, as I lugged laundry out of the basement, I noticed writing on S's whiteboard. I moved in closer, and saw that she had written herself a note - a guide, of sorts:
 |
| Frow = Fro |
I chuckled to myself, but at the same time, I felt my throat tighten with emotion. A few days before, there had been a different message scrawled on her whiteboard. It had read, "6th grade is probably scary." She had worried about starting middle school all summer, and that worry had worked its way in red marker onto her whiteboard - her mind's voice reflecting right back to her. But now, that message had been replaced with a step-by-step guide to ensure the warding off of any hair trauma. After all, no way was she going to go into sixth grade with a "FROW", for crying out loud. Unacceptable!
I went upstairs to her room, where she was already asleep, her newly layered hair in lion-like tangles around her face. I leaned in to kiss her, and for one moment, her mouth moved just as it did when she was a baby - when she dreamed of milk or pacifiers. "You'll do great," I whispered into her hair. And then I turned off her light and went to bed, my baby's new journey just one sleep away.
