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A to Z Challenge: Hair starts with H (so does Hide)

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Hair
Hair

And what do hair and hide have in common? Hide is what you want to do if you have bad hair. Hence, another h word, Hat.

Honestly (another h word) we can’t help but notice a person’s head, the majority of which is covered with hair. Regardless of culture, race, or gender humans have a lot invested in their hair.  An African-American friend told me that when they get their hair done, spending considerable time and money on it, they tell even their husbands “don’t touch my hair!” It’s important stuff.

Lately I have been considering retirement and the necessity of cutting back on expenses. We have saved money the last 41 years by the husband enduring having his hair cut by me. He may have gone to a barber one or two times but I can’t remember when. So I am developing the strategy of saving money on my hair cuts by 1) not cutting it or 2) cutting it myself. In the past a good cut by someone I trust has cost me at least $50, so I’m going to save a couple hundred a year even by conservative figuring.  Having considered this I approached the scissor moment a couple of times and then chickened out. Even being not too happy with how I look at present is better than having to hide under a hat for six months while a mistake grows out.

This morning, struck with sudden, irrational bravery I started in before I could change my mind. It’s only hair, right? It’s not like I’m deciding to cut off an arm or a couple legs. And I have to learn to do it if I’m going to retire (that might be a bit of an exaggeration). I looked at styles and how-to’s on the internet. If you want to convince yourself that we care about this subject just start looking – I found my target head of hair and a progression of how this person looked, season by season for years of her life.

This cut is not a radical change for me but it is four inches shorter and believe me, there is a trick to cutting something behind you in a mirror. Go ahead, try it.

 

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Before
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During
After
After

 

I Like This Poem

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I like many poems, but this poem about poetry explains to me why many people just don’t get it.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

— Billy Collins, from The Apple That Astonished Paris

While it is day…

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I’ve heard this phrase used in various settings to show that every minute of life is unique. Every opportunity comes once, and there never is another quite like it. And some things must be done while it is day because the night is coming when you won’t be able to do it anymore.

I think along these lines every time I am together with family, as I am now. My parents are with me at my home in Florida and I am very aware of the limited time for the special project I’m working on with my mom. I am finding out who she is in different ways than I have used before. I am interviewing her. I am writing her memories of being a child, a teen, a young married woman.  I am realizing that just because I have known her all my life, doesn’t mean that I know her. She had a life before me that figured heavily in the formation of who she is now. As I hear of those years, those events, I see a story that is more compelling and inspiring than I knew. I became a part of that story and I feel a strong connection to it.

As mom and I sit and talk there are times when the details of the story aren’t clear any more and we wish for someone else who might have been there.  My mom has a brother who came down to visit us one day. He was closer to her in age than her other siblings and he knew many of her stories, having lived them with her.  His perspective was different and added extra color and depth to the family narrative. Another of her brothers passed away a week ago and I can’t help but wonder what he would have added. Did anyone ask him to tell about his life? Did he leave any of those details for others to know?

Our experiences make us who we are. There are reasons we think the way we do and react to life in certain characteristic ways. Many times I have had friends or acquaintances who I considered to be difficult people, until I heard their story. I’ve known some very remarkable people and wondered where they got their courage or their ambition, until I heard their story. Knowing the story is so helpful in loving and having compassion on others.  The stories need to be told if we are to become peacemakers, helpers of each other.

Do you have a living parent that you think you know? Or a husband/wife? Or even a child? As we look at life’s experiences through our own mental window, it is possible to entirely miss what is happening in someone else’s inner world.  Don’t be too sure you know them.  Don’t think it doesn’t matter. Don’t be slow to ask. Do it while it is day. 

The Hill

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There is a hill.  On a farm in Wisconsin.

At one time there was only one tree on the hill, an old white pine that stood guard alongside a lane that connected the fields. It was tall and imposing, standing out on the landscape as one looked north from the farmhouse to the horizon. I grew up looking at that tree, running to it for thinking time, listening to the constant, soft brush of wind through the pine needles. I would have liked to have climbed up in it but there were no branches I could reach.  It was a refuge.

One year there were cows in the field. My father had sold his milk cows but had a herd of young cattle that was like a band of unruly teenagers.  They would run the fence line looking for a place to go under, over or through the barbed wire. They had a great deal of energy and, something that most people don’t realize about cows, they had a crazy curiosity. Anything unusual within their sight would start them on an approach path, faster and faster until they were running in a stampede, a kind of mob mentality as I remember it.

I was visiting the tree one day when the cows were in that field.  They saw me on the hill and came rushing up to investigate.  Cows in a large group are intimidating. They’re big, heavy animals and they mill around, eyes wide and hot, moist breath sniffing at the object of their curiosity, all the time ready to bolt if startled.  I flattened myself against it’s trunk and the tree and I were engulfed in the herd.

It turned into a magical moment. As long as I was still the cows took turns pointing their wet noses at me and milling back into the group. I was the vulnerable one with only the tree at my back for protection. They were the free and dominant ones.  Eventually they were satisfied and trotted off in a different direction.  I still felt the awe and wonder of it as I watched them take off. I feel it again as I remember.

The tree was hit by lightning a few years later during a storm. Its twisted, split and broken frame lay on the hill for several years before it rotted away.

Now, there is just a hill.

Taking Things Back (How to Spend Twice as Much Time Learning Anything)

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I’ve been in computer class for the last week. I need to know about computers because I’ve come to depend on them for paying bills, keeping in touch with everyone, expressing myself to the world, finding out how to get places, … way too many things.  I tried to get along without one last week when my Dell darling started freezing at the worst possible moments.  It was hard, and I relented and took it to the computer doctor. It was suffering from hard drive failure – not completely dead yet, but time to call hospice.

Shall I buy a new hard drive? Shall I get a tablet? Shall I get another small laptop? I asked (begged) for advice from all three experts in my family and then went impulsive instead and bought a tablet at a big box store. After all, I had to check my bank balance and there’s no way to do it without some kind of computer, right?

After a couple days of frustration and a learning curve which was curving completely in the wrong direction, I called the computer doctor again. 

“So what operating system does it have?” he asked.

“I think it’s SOS, stupid operating system. It doesn’t have any of the buttons I’m used to seeing/”

“Well, what kind of tablet do you have?”

“It’s the same kind as my phone. I got it so they would sync.  But where are all my email addresses?”

“You have an android. Your Windows contacts won’t sync.”

My computer vocabulary was already stretched to the max. Everything after that sounded like blah, blah, blah… but the bottom line advice was “take it back”. 

I’m starting to see a common thread in my buying habits.  I need something. I don’t know much about the thing I need. I get tired of trying to figure out the best buy and just go buy something (usually something cheap). And then I learn that I shouldn’t have bought that thing and I take it back.  It’s a way of learning. 

The bike I bought at the pawn shop had a gear lever which I discovered later had no cable attached (what?! no Bluetooth gear shift?)

The used car I bought had unexpected surprises (only one key!?!! and a new one costs $500?!)

After two trips to the computer doctor, four trips to the stores and about six hours of tearing my hair out, I know a little more about computers today, and obviously I’m back typing in words on my newest purchase. We’ll see if I got the right thing this time.  I’m just asking, isn’t there a better way to learn? Maybe not.

P.S. The computer doctor told me that I was not the most tech ignorant person he had run into. Just thought I’d mention that.

 

I think this is true.

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“There is no such thing as an ordinary human. ”
I heard it today but can’t remember who to credit it to, sorry.  It’s really one of the points I want to make. We might do ordinary things, say ordinary things, act in ordinary ways but we are all pretty special creations. Don’t undervalue yourself. Your value is not in your job, your relationships, your wealth or your power, all of which will come to an end and disappoint. Your value is given to you by your creator, whose image you bear.  You are his crown jewel of creation. He values you.  I believe it. 

Retreadment

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I don’t like the word retirement in any of it’s many uses.  Retirement community, retirement savings, retirement income – to me they all sound a little too final, like something that happens just before one dies. I do like the thought of a retread, you know, the thing they do to tires to give them a new exterior and more useful life.

I’m kind of in retreadment now.  Since November I’ve traveled a lot (no financial income), left my nearly full-time employment (no financial income) and have been sampling life at home (no financial income). I’m spending a lot more time thinking about, you guessed it, no financial income.

My thought going into the grocery store is now “how can I get in there and out again with only the things on my list?”.

My thought looking at the phone bill is “maybe I don’t need to pay to read email on my phone all the time”.

Thinking of the next meal “there’s probably something in the freezer that I need to use”.

At the gas pump I’m thinking “thank you Lord that I have a tank that only costs $35 to fill and gives me 500 miles of travel.”

At the first of every month I’m thinking “is there enough in the account to make that car payment?”

I’m not exactly to the point of worrying, because I do believe in God’s promise to supply my needs. However I am used to having a lot more than what I need. I’m realizing that the retreadment life is going to be a combination of creative saving, creative spending and creative cutting back/cutting out. And I need to think about what new work (the retread part) will fit my energy, ability and calling.

Till Death Do Us Part

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Forty-one years ago we said those words, the husband and I.  I think we had a better than average understanding of what that meant, and here we are, still not parted by death or anything else. I cannot speak for both of us, but for myself, I have learned many useful things about marriage. And about men. And about the husband in particular.  

The most interesting thing is that we are still changing, and there is more new stuff to learn as that happens.  For our anniversary we are going to start a program called Prepare/Enrich (prepare-enrich.com) and our first task is to answer online questions about ourselves.  After all these years of living with the husband there are still things about his early years that I probably don’t know. And there are things about my early years that have formed my ways and views that I might not be aware of either. I am warned that there are about two hours worth of this questioning to wade through before we start the next part of the program. 

The next part is called “dating”, something we haven’t done regularly since being married.  Actually, it’s going to be double dating with a mentoring couple, and it’s supposed to be fun.  This whole concept is intriguing to me because it sounds very personal and potentially helpful.  It’s not a roomful of people at a marriage conference where no one knows what you’re thinking, it’s just the husband and I with two other people kind of like us but capable of objectivity and insight into our natures (because they get to see our two hours worth of answers from the online portion). We’ve never worked on our relationship intentionally like this before (yeah, it’s about time…) but like I said, forty-one years and we still haven’t killed each other.  Isn’t that what it means when you say until death do us part? 

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God Bless South Korea

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We are at  Incheon International Airport in Seoul after a safe flight from Phnom Penh.  The  Koreans are so … I’m not sure how to say what they are.  When they do something, they are so determined to do it really well. I’ve always been impressed with Korean Airlines. For example, I think most of us getting on the flight leaving Phnom Penh came from the same time zone where it was midnight.  They could have let us sleep the whole six hours in the air, but no. They wanted to give us a meal so breakfast came, at 3 am.  And I ate because I’m  in obedient mode (having just been on a mission trip).  And somewhere in the six hours they passed snacks and drinks twice. 

Ok, and as I mentioned we are now having a short layover at Incheon in the Prestige  KAL lounge, thanks to the Hunsader’s many miles on this airline.
I am grateful for warm water to wash my face for the first time in ten days. And that’s not all that’s warm.
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A tired person could easily fall asleep on the heated toilet seat with separate flushes for adults, seniors and  – I forget all that the controls had options for, but it was so extensive that they had to put a separate label on so people could actually flush the thing. Awesome.

And now I’m off to the food bar for a cup of coffee before we head out for the long flight.  Still thinking about all the people who came to the airport to see us off, the 45 minutes of hugging and gift giving, the hands pressed against the windows and the heart hand signals pointed in our direction.  What precious people they are. I’m just sayin’, it’s impossible not to love them.