A bowl and a box of curly blond hair

A bowl and a box of curly blond hair.

They both sit on my desk. The bowl has water in it, it is my dancing bowl. I have moved it from the kitchen to my writing area. The blond curly hair is a handful. It is in a clear box so I can see it. Yes, I suppose a bowl of water and a clear box of hair are odd objects to have close by. My own children think the hair is a bit creepy, and if you do too, I am not offended. Maybe as I tell the story of both, you might understand a bit more why I need this hair and this water, this clear box and pottered bowl close by.

I will start with the clear box. In one of my home education purchasing whims, I bought a number of clear boxes with the hope of us collecting all sorts of natural objects to examine under our magnifying glasses. I did not check the size of the boxes when I placed the order, and as a result, I have some very large boxes that sit in my garage. Only now am I finding unexpected ways to use these boxes.

I like the clear box because I see through it. Allowing light to pass through, its form reminds me of my own longing for clarity. But what I really like about it is what it holds, my three year old son's long blond curly hair--a remnant of his first haircut one year ago. There are far too many things to say about why I keep this hair so visible. My other two children have only a small piece of hair from their first hair cut, saved in a small envelope, stored in their childhood treasure box, hidden away in some closet. It is not the first hair cut I want to remember, but rather all that this hair symbolizes.

I keep the hair close by because it reminds me of the pregnancy of my soul. That wild time as I turned toward forty when there was so much growth and gestation. I was becoming. My son's hair reflected my soul in such a way that I often saw his hair as a manifestation of some greater alignment with the Divine.

Children live in holy time. They are so open, clear, and interested in the world. They are so close to the holy that it is difficult to ever imagine why we separate the mundane from the sacred and the physical from the spiritual.

So, I became the protector of my son's long, blond, curly hair. I waited for some sign, instinct or a slight shift in awareness, something that would guide me in my timing, something that would say, "now is the time to cut."

I was a holding out. My poor husband who had heard too many times: "oh, what a lovely daughter you have, and her hair is so beautiful," was ready to cut his hair far sooner than I. While he was tired of the continuous gender confusion, I was reveling in how his hair was so wild and full and curly and that people recognized its uniqueness. I imagined, and maybe I was just fooling myself, that even though we don't have the language for it, in their admiration of his beautiful hair, they saw the sacred. Looking beyond gender, and even looking beyond the individual, I clearly saw innocence, fullness of life, and a deep wildness that is so natural to who we truly are.

My son's hair became my own call for wildness. Remember I was approaching forty. I was looking for something in my life that had purpose. Scanning backwards, I was looking for the lost threads, trying to notice the themes, the holy sparks, hoping that when I found them, I could truly step in to who I really am. I was looking for something that was essentially me and wild was my way in.

Wild is a funny word. Culturally, it has so many negative connotations: unruly, uncivilized, uncontrollable emotion. And yet, it is who we really are before we are tamed, domesticated, and told to keep our deepest emotions hidden. But what if our emotions were indeed allow to have more say? What if the domestication of our true selves have gone a bit too far? If that is the case, then returning to our raw, wild selves might be a way to step into our true essence.

My son's hair reminds me to walk the fine line between wild as harmful and wild as liberating. I need to clearly see his hair right now to find my own voice, natural, free, and wild, so it can grow and develop, so it can finally be free from all those moments in my life when I suppressed my true self, my soul, and even my emotions in order to be just what others expected me to be.