this woman’s work

Yesterday after Boo at the Zoo we stopped at Trader Joe’s to grab some half-and-half plus stuff for dinner. Madison was still in her flower costume so she was extra cute. She was also extra tired (as was I) so her energy level was a little higher than usual. I ran into a friend of mine and we were chatting while Madison was hitting up the sample folks for a taste of chocolate pudding. Then she was spinning over to me and kinda busy around my feet while I talked. You know how it is, I was keeping half an eye on her while my friend and I caught up. Perhaps not as attentive as I might be is what I’m saying.

Just then a handsome man came over and asked sternly, “Who’s child is this?”

“Mine,” I answered, frantically  trying to figure out if she’d done something while I wasn’t looking. 

“Well, I have something to say to you.”

I cringed trying to think of what might be in reach that she was messing with. Also because he was African American, I was wondering if her wind-mussed, flower-hood-frazzled hair was coming under attack.

“You might just be mother to a future president of the United States!” then he started laughing.

He was complimenting Madison! Because of her adorableness, of course. I started laughing, too, and told him I was worried he was coming over to tell me she’d done something or said something wrong.

“I know, because I was so serious, right?” Then he introduced himself and said he wanted an invitation to her inaugeration. “You can google me and send me my invite!”

So Lionel Dickey, know that I remembered your name and I’ll be sure you’re on the list!! Thanks for making my daughter feel extra like a princess yesterday!!

My mom went and saw the movie “Hair” with my dad and their then best friends, who lived in the house behind us. After she saw it she went and got the soundtrack and later my dad got her a bootleg video of the movie.

I don’t think she ever saw the stage play but she loved the movie.

We kids watched it a lot even though we were really too young — I was nine when it came out and the bootleg video shows up pretty soon after. A lot of the more adult stuff (drug use, sex) went over my head anyway. (Although there were some awkward times when one of us would be singing some of the risque lyrics in public and my mom would have to shush us.)

This was her favorite part (go to the 1 hour 20 minute mark — about 13 seconds past that is when the song starts). I dare you to watch this young woman belt out that song without getting chills. (If it’s too much work to see it on Hulu, here’s the youtube link — the sound quality is better on Hulu.)

My mom used to play that song all of the time. She’d sit on the step that led to our sunken living room and sometimes I would go and sit next to her and listen with her. She’d play it over and over.

When I rewatch this movie I think about what it must have meant to my mother. She was about the age of those characters at that time in the sixties but she was also married and starting to have kids. When Hair came out — when she went to see it — her marriage was ending. She must’ve spent a lot of time thinking “what if” when she listened to the soundtrack.

It’s still one of my favorite songs both for Cheryl Barnes’s amazing voice and for the memory of my mom sitting on the step listening with tears in her eyes.

(I have to add that Madison, watching this, said: “She looks like celery. Some people just look like vegetables. She’s straight like a stick of celery.”)

Madison and I spent some times yesterday watching youtube videos about doing hair. Someone in the local IFIF group forwarded this channel to our email list and I was watching it the other day because Madison wanted to learn how to put beads in her hair. She saw a guy with black beads and braids at the grocery and then we saw two little girls at the park and another little girl at a restaurant so Madison was inspired for me to try it.

Madison’s hair is tricky. It has a lot of different textures throughout (it’s getting very kinky just at her forehead and no place else) and she is prone to play hair salon, which means she dismantles her braids or pony tails and brushes it hard. I’ll sit down and get her hair done for the day after breakfast, go downstairs to work and by the time I come up for lunch she’s taken it down and brushed it to a wide frizz around her head. Most days she ends up with a simple scraped back ponytail. I’m not crazy about the ponytail look. Yes, she looks adorable but to me it also looks lazy. Still I’m not going to stop her from wanting to mess with her own hair and we keep ponytail holders in the car now since she often does it while we’re driving and she’s bored.

My goal is to just get her dang hair out of her eyes and the more braiding I can do towards the front of her head, the more the style will hold since the front is so kinky and also so much shorter (it’s all her new post-baby growth coming in). That’s why her ponytails always end up looking sloppy. I could slap a bunch of product on her hair to keep it down but I’m not so hep to the product — even natural product — since it would mean more hairwashing for her, an activity she despises. I like to stick to once a week hairwashing and so we live with the frizzies. (I do use some loc butter to keep her braids tight but otherwise it’s just leave-in conditioner.)

Anyway, our favorite youtube video was this one:

So after watching that we were both inspired even though Madison’s hair wouldn’t hold most of those styles. Still, we got an A for effort and this is what we did with her hair yesterday:

I know — it’s kinda sloppy. It’s hard for me to do tight braids because 1) I’m not the small motor skill girl in the family (that would be Erica) and 2) her hair is really slippery and 3) she’s a pretty wriggly person even when she’s trying very very hard to stay still. It took an hour but it’s holding today (most of her hair styles don’t hold for very long before the braids start coming undone) so it was worth it. Likely if I could do smaller braids it would last longer but I’m not that skilled and she’s not that patient. (Watching the “how to” videos fascinated her in part because the other little girls sit so still but her body just won’t let her.) You can see that if her hair is combed or brushed, it gets pretty straight in the back.

This is another style we did the other day, which she loved but took apart just a couple of hours later. (sigh):

This was my first time trying piggyback braids but I should have done it lower towards the front of her head. The back I left unbraided, which I usually do with all of her styles because Madison likes to feel it on the back of her neck. Come summer we’ll probably rethink that.

Next post some pictures of Madison where you can see her face. (As always, write me if you want the password!)