The Haircut

There have been too many messages to not do this today.  Too many messages today to not do this. 

So I will.

I have been, very slowly, recovering from a strep infection in my throat…living in strange fever dreams and visions calling me to speak – sometimes for myself – sometimes for others but always for truth, however disjointed, opaque, or strangely presented.

I knew today would be strange…had a feeling today would be strange.  It’s my mom’s birthday; the first one after her passing in March.  My dreams and visions, in and out of fever, have been manifesting themselves in many ways in the past few days…dreams from weeks, months, and even years ago are walking around me in various forms:  teachings in the books of my favorite writers, lessons in my course work, and today on CBC as Adam Cohen spoke of his father’s upcoming poetry collection and the great love he has for his father.

That was the straw…the call to action so loud and clear, she could have been sitting beside me telling me to write this: my mom.  A month after Cohen passed to Spirit, I dreamed I sat with him in a broken down conservatory.  I was, for some reason only dream can know, his sound person and, as in this waking world, I have no earthly idea how to run sound equipment.  In the dream the power went out or was out and the only person to be heard singing Song of Bernadette was me.  Mr. Cohen walked down the three steps from the stage to come and sit across from me, where the sound equipment was, leaned into me and chuckled, “hey, why don’t you take that song?  You sing it better than I ever could.”  In my dream I remember saying: Holy shit! Leonard Cohen just gave me Song of Bernadette!  I remember, very clearly, understanding, even before waking, what that meant. 

I shared that dream with my mom.

I knew the second I heard Cohen’s name mentioned that every word was for me – every word was from both of them to me.  I knew that whatever came out of this, I had to write this post.  In case there was any doubt, the whole interview ended with I Came So Far For Beauty when Adam was asked what his favorite song of his father’s was.  I have sung that song in a performance evening attended by my parents when my 26 year old was a baby.

She was, as always, speaking in a way I was forced to heed – eventually.

And I put it off as long as possible because, honestly, I am not really sure how to write it.

I could side track the task with the stories of the dreams I have had recently where I am dancing with one of my students – a hoop dancer – who, in the dream taught me to dance while my mother stood and watched, smiling.  That morning I woke up crying. In the dream I had said how much I missed her, as she faded into the place between awake and dream time. 

Today one of the teachings in my course work was hoop dance teachings.  No kidding!  Yeah.  She’s here.

So, I guess, this is it:

My hair.

Some people who read this have seen me around recently.  They have noticed a dramatic change in my choice of hair style:  my hair has been cut off.  It has been a difficult process to get there – one I didn’t really want to go through.  I, truthfully, would have rather left my hair long, feminine, pretty. 

I knew I couldn’t do that.

Many peoples have many, various, beautiful teachings about hair and the sacredness of how best to keep, handle, and revere it.  Indigenous people have long traditions about the sacredness and medicine of hair.  They are as unique as the various families, nations, and communities.  For some people, some who wear braids, sometimes the teaching is that one braid, traditionally was for the mother medicine and teachings and one was for father medicine and teachings.  For others, for many, hair is the connection to Mother Earth – the tendrils connecting us to Her – and all she gives us in all of the levels and ways of being.  It connects us to prayers, to love, to our Ancestors, to all of our teachings we have gathered through our journey – especially from our elders…those who help to create us as we are…as we have become.

For me, in that regard, my hair grew most during the period of time my mother was sick – the time when I journeyed to her; when we found a peace…when I found a peace.  We talked about our lives, how we became so far apart…how I was forced to either hold old grudges until I ran out of time to drop them or decide what was worth holding against a dying woman to make me feel vindicated for the years I had to withdraw to save myself.  In the end, in the days before the never ending drip of synthetic pain medication and saline and serrated sponges for her chemo wounded mouth, we spoke of our choices and she said and did absolutely everything I had hoped she would…everything I didn’t think she would because she never seemed to understand what my deal was – so I thought. She talked about why she drank.  She talked about all I had been through.  She talked about family pain she had carried, too, forever and chose not to burden my sister and I with so we could have a good life.

 

It was that once in a life time talk.  It had to be.  It was.

After that, I returned one more time for two weeks, through the Yule season, spending Christmas with my family, for the first time in over 20 years, in hospice.  I slept on a blow up cot beside her hospital bed, praying to her every night that it would be ok if she wanted to go.  She was struggling with pain meds and her stomach.  We weren’t sure how long we had with her. 

The docs sorted out the meds.  She rebounded and made it to early March.

I texted every day or nearly every day.  I had my friend and stylist re-coloured my roots, re-coloured the flamingo pink streaks. I kept in constant contact and I prayed and my hair grew.  So that by late February, when I talked to her for the last time, my hair had grown a couple of inches longer.  I told her about the drum I was making.  She was so excited.  Before we hung up she told me she loved me and started to cry…said she always loved me…we cried together. 

Not long after that, I dreamed she was at a gallery opening for Kendra but it was like the old, dusty barns near Chilliwack…the place called Gammy and Grumpas (or something like that) where there are all kinds of old treasures.  She was the first in line to come in but she was on the other side of the line.  She had a walker for some reason and she looked much better than she had the last time I had seen her.  I found her accidentally, as I was trying to avoid running into people I had seen in a different part of the “gallery.”  I immediately went to her and asked her if she wanted to come in.  She told me that she was where she needed to be.  Somehow I knew she came to say goodbye to me.  I remember, very vividly, putting my hands on the bar of the walker and leaning my head into hers.  We stood there, forehead to forehead for a long time.  I woke up with a start – an energy passing over me with a chill – and I was convinced she was about to pass.

It would be another few weeks before that would happen.

Still my hair grew.

I prayed and my hair grew.

After she passed into Spirit on March 5, life kept going.  March 18 was her celebration of life, late snow fluttering onto the golf course where the gathering was held…keeping many family members from the event.  Some of our Saskatchewan family were snowed in. We barely made it through a clearing in that late snow pattern we had in March.

Life kept moving.  Poetry readings happened.  Presentations happened.  Graduations, birthdays, visits from dad, alone, happened.

Winter changed to spring changed to summer.

All in my hair.

I decided, pretty much by the end of May, that I was going to go back to Saskatchewan to piece myself back together with my mother.  That has been documented here, too.

All of that trip grew into the grey roots and the faded pink.  I had to get that trip into that hair before I cut it.  That was the last piece I needed to connect this teaching…so I thought.

When I came home in early August, I fought with myself about it.  I didn’t want to.  I didn’t want to have to deal with the vanity issues I knew would follow…the hatred of my face…the struggle with my gender fluidity. All of it.  I didn’t want to add that to all of the other changes in my life.  But I knew I had to.  It was the only thing that made sense.

So I did it.  My dear stylist friend is a Sto:lo woman.  We did ceremony before the cut.  It all was done with good heart. I had held onto the hair a little too long after but have since received good teachings around how to deal with the ceremony of the after and have taken care of that now. 

All that’s to do now is to grow it back.  New life stages, new growth, new hair.  Only thing is that it’s a constant reminder of the loss.  I am sure that is another of the deep teachings of this ceremony.  Learning from those who have gone before me to remember to have a grateful heart for the good teachings she left me with…which brings be back to the beginning of this piece, of today – like the hoop – at the end of the interview with Adam Cohen, I found myself asking out loud:  “what was her legacy for me?”  I would have to say the granite uprightness and the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other when everything in you keeps screaming to just collapse.  My Granny, her mother, had that, too.  Granite strength from intergenerational trauma so far back the Mormons are the only ones who could find the end of it.  Could be worse, I guess.

Days of long hair - summer trip with dad.

So, if you happen upon me at a thing now and then, and you see the change, you know the story now.  I’m not loving it but it’s a process.  And it will grow back. Thicker and healthier.  It always does.