Sixty-three

On Sunday I was wandering around A C Moore, looking for a particular sized frame, listening to my book, far away, when I realised that a woman was trying to attract my attention, and had perhaps been speaking for a while, not realising that I had earphones in my ears. She was saying, very loudly, as she had probably supposed that I was deaf, "I JUST LOVE YOUR HAIR!  It looks exactly the same as that movie, you know, Tangled?  Exactly the same colour and everything!  Just lovely!"  So I thanked her and walked away feeling a bit perplexed, because I was pretty sure, it being Angelina's favourite movie, that the heroine in Tangled is blonde?  She must have meant Brave, but confused the title because of the state of my hair - tangled!

I am quite partial to my hair actually.  When the boys were born 21 years ago I started going grey, and as I didn't want to be mistaken for their grandmother, being a relatively old new mother, I decided to henna it, which I had done once before when I was still naturally blonde and had given my mother the fright of her life by turning up on her doorstep one university vacation with bright light-orange hair!  

Henna is natural, just crushed leaves, basically, so it doesn't destroy hair like regular dye, and actually keeps it well-conditioned.   I have been doing it ever since, and now I am kind of stuck with it as I would have to cut my hair short-short in order to let it grow out grey, and I have no desire whatsoever to do that.  So I'll probably be that old 80 year old woman walking around, all wrinkled and bent, but with copper-coloured hair to the end!

When I was little I couldn't have long hair because I suffered from asthma and the doctors said that short hair was best because it couldn't hold dust and whatnot, so while I envied the beautiful long wavy ponytail of my best friend Trish, my hair was always cropped short like a boy's.  As soon as I became a teenager I rebelled (against almost everything) and grew my hair long and have only had short hair one other time since then when I cropped it in a moment of madness, tired of the two babies pulling on it! 

Anne and Jess, the henna-girls.

So so cold to get up and begin in the morning, -14C, a ridiculous temperature, and dark, cold and dark.  I can't wait for spring, really can't wait!  Of course it is not -14C in our room, but still feels frigid!  The alarm goes and I just want to turn over and curl up in the warmth left by Tim's good body, as he leaps up to go and play squash at some unearthly hour!  I want to sink back down into the interesting dream I was having, float off into that warm dark ocean...

To actually get out of bed and find an outfit for the day, then take off your warm sleep-clothes, and put on the cold clothing, is torture. 

But it has to be done, and a breakfast made, and a lunch packed, and as the first light emerges weakly, tentatively, through the trees, and the birds come out and sing happily, having survived another freezing night, telling everyone there is fresh seed and water here, I gather all my school things and pick my way down the icy path to the car, and off I drive to the city.  Today I listen to WBUR National Public Radio, because my book is finished and I can't bear to begin a new one yet, the last one was SO good. 

So I have the radio on and I think.  And there is Ukraine, with Russian troops poised, and later in the morning my ninth graders discuss this fact, and debate which forces run the world, while they are creating beautiful flowing tissue-paper collages of seascapes and landscapes and water-lilies, and they come to the right conclusion, that it is weapons, the sale of weapons.  This is what makes the world go around.  How sad it is that they should already know such things.  But also good, how they talk, discuss, and then are not submerged by it all, but dig in to the colours, splash on the mod-podge, fashion a composition, enjoy, ride high on the beauty of their creations, and eventually clean up, organise themselves, and stride off to the next class. 

Students often remark how slowly all the other subjects go, and how fast the art class flies by, and I have to almost physically push them out of the room sometimes, they are so caught up in it.  It is so sad, that we lose all the art we just take for granted when we are young.  Art is in every subject when you are little, every little kid thinks they're an artist, they believe it with all their hearts.  And then as you get older it is gradually squeezed out of you, you are told that it is unimportant, science and math are paramount. Art is for people who can't do those things, art is beneath the intelligent ones, and soon, very few young adults believe they are artists.  Our happiness leaks out like air from a forgotten birthday balloon, imperceptibly at first, but a part of our soul withers.