Big Hair

"I trust you," I said to my stylist. "Do whatever you want."

Trust is an interesting gift to give someone. In German, "gift" means "poison," and I think somehow this sense ghosts our English use of the word as well. I'll give you this, this thing, this object, this power, and now you must consider me, my feelings, my reactions, my desires, in return. You will look at that "500 Onion Recipes" and you will be compelled to think of me. You will look at the ghastly pink and black ruffled shirt jacket I bought you whilst under the influence of post-partum depression and you will think of me and sigh gently, a little depressed now yourself. You will recall in the middle of an evening of network television that I said "I trust you," and you will LAUGH YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF.

It was so cold today that I broke the law. Carless, I called my father to come pick me up and together we picked up my two-year-old and buckled him in the back seat of the car without a car seat for a nerve-wracking two-block drive home from the sitter's. My father of course used to blithely haul his entire family unrestrained for thousands of miles on the Trans Canada, the whole interior so completely blanketed in cigar smoke that even at the time I wondered if he could see through it well enough to drive. We put on foot puppet plays for the drivers behind us. We peed in a pail perched on the backseat floor, as my dad is one of those Point A to Point B type guys. We learned to somersault in the backseat of the Buick. We launched gummi bears from the sunroof. We lived. We were young and happy and we had Farrah Fawcett flips.

And now we are older, so much older, and we have stripey hair. Big stripey hair.