It's a moment of quiet, stolen like a cookie in a ceramic jar on the counter from the bustle and swirl and constant movement that is house guests. She is impatient with me. Grandma and Grandpa are already downstairs, pouring coffee and listening to another of her brother's endless tales and trying to understand whatever copycat yarn Quinn is spinning. She sighs and shuffles her feet.
"Just another minute," I soothe and I continue to massage mango scented oil into her thirsty hair despite her little mewling cat noise of displeasure. "There's a lot of fuzz in your hair," I add by way of explanation.
If you have not cared for wiry, kinky hair, you probably can not imagine that. Hair that needs oil, olive oil, Jamaican oil, essential oils, added straight from the bottle and left in to seep down and feed the roots. My hair is slick with oil of its own creation after three days without washing, hers drinks oil for breakfast and begs for more at bedtime, parched with thirst. We are trying her hair's natural look this summer, without the tears and the beads and uncomfortable hours spent sitting while momma's ten thumbs wrestle with tiny braids. It looks beautiful, so long as I stay on top of the moisturizing oil, but the impossibly tight, spiky, dense spirals of curls collect fuzz and debris like a lint brush. The pieces must be picked out one by one, pulled to the end of the twig of hair that holds them and extracted.
I pale at blanket games. Don't EVEN get me started on sand.
She sighs again. She cares nothing for fuzz-free hair. "Your hair collects fuzzies and lint, I could use it to get Hampton's dog hair off of my shirt," I tease her. "But, it's very beautiful."
I don't know why I ask her, I hardly ever bring up this subject. I prefer to let her take the lead.
"Do you think it's beautiful?"
"Yes," she answers, emphatic and enthusiastic, "I think my whole body is beautiful, I think my hands are beautiful and I have very brown skin," she holds up her arm to show me as if it is a discovery of hers, "and it is beautiful too."
"It sure is," I barely choke around my sudden tears. I am struck dumb. Again. Yet again, every day in some small way that is also huge, I am stuck dumb by my children. It is not a script I have fed her or an answer she thinks I expect, it is not something we have discussed directly before this.
The moment sinks in like sunlight on my skin. It warms my core. We have to take these small triumphs, let them bask us in success, let them wash us in certainty. We have to take these moments for what they are and not question or second guess or wonder, just say to ourselves, briefly convinced it is truth, "I am an impatient and imperfect parent, I make mistakes, I stumble, I have no idea, for the most part, whether I am doing this well, but I am doing something right."
She sure is beautiful. May she always know it.
And then, her brother called her a pee-pee, poo-poo head, because potty language is all the rage at the anyhouse these days, and she screamed at a volume and frequency that could shatter glass that he had to stop it right now or she would send a witch to stab him in his sleep, and then he sobbed that Saige was teasing him about witches and I think I might have hidden in the bathroom for while.
I didn't say I was doing everything right, now did I?
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