Growing Out While Growing Up

I sat in the kitchen last week and watched as my hair stylist cut and curled my daughter's hair. (Yes, my hair stylist comes to my house. Yes, she is awesome.) Ken's graduation photos loomed before us and with each wisp of hair curled and wrangled into position she resembled more of the beautiful adult she is morphing into and less of the disheveled six year old she once was. I couldn't help but sigh.

I used to have hair like that.

What, you thought I was going to talk about how hard it is watching your kids grow up only to let them go? Please, I'm not that deep. 

(Note to self: You should write that post.)

(I will. Just not today.)

When I was a young child my hair was fine blonde wisps that, when not dirty with the sweat of a hard day's child's play, floated like finely spun spider webs and shone like gold in the afternoon sun. Time tarnished my hair, vanity bleached it, and finally, over a year ago, aggravation hacked it all off.

But vanity is a hard thing to let go of, once it's climbed onto your back like the monkeys at the Rock of Gibraltar. I watched my daughter's teenaged locks shimmer with the glow of youth as she tossed her mane over her shoulders and instinctively my hands went to my own head of hair.

Okay, so the monkeys of Gibraltar were less on back and more on my head. Whatever.

I'm rocking the dirty dishwater blonde/brown hair, highlighted with the greys I never knew I had all while trying to grow out the pixie cut my husband loathed and lose the ten pounds I invariably gain over the holiday season.

It's a bad time of year to have mom hair. God bless the toque.

Nothing says 'youthful and carefree' like covering up what is now effectively a mullet, with a fuzzy hat with hands that clap when you squeeze the pompon on the end. The boys' on the basketball team love it.

(Love can be defined here as rolling their eyes and mocking me in the locker room, but hey, they do it with affection.)

The last time I tried to grow out my hair from a pixie cut, I was numb with grief. My kid had just died and it didn't matter that I had dyed my hair an atrocious shade of brown that looked green in certain light. I just didn't care. (Oh hey, it only took me eight years to find an upside to grief. There really are silver linings to every storm cloud. Go figure.)

However, the only thing I'm grieving right now is the size zero pants of my youth and the fact I've reached the age where people just automatically assume I'm old enough to be somebody's mother. It doesn't matter that I'm four somebodies mother; my ego has firmly strapped on the blinders of aging and is planted in the land of delusion.

This makes growing out a short hairstyle painful. Toss in the whisker from a new neck mole just discovered, those tedious chin hairs that dodge tweezers, cheek fur growing increasingly thick and more lines on your neck than on the front page of a newspaper and I've decided I'm never cutting my hair again.

I'm going to go full on Crystal Gayle, unless of course my hair starts to thin, in which case, I'm buzzing it all off and asking my grandfather if I can borrow my (bless her soul) grandmother's wig. 

The older I get, the more comfortable I tend to be with how I look. I no longer exercise or diet to stay thin; instead I work to stay strong enough to ably care for Knox; I rarely wear makeup beyond blush and mascara and only because I tend to look a tad corpse-y without it, and I can't remember the last time I showcased my 'girls' or for that matter, shaved my legs.

I am what I am, as the saying goes, and I'm pretty happy with all that I am. 

Except for this mop on my head. 

I walk past a mirror and I laugh. I can't help it. The mullet shag look amuses me, as does the fact the longer it grows, the frizzier and curlier it becomes. There was a time I'd kill for curls. I don't recognize the middle aged mom staring back at me. 

The only golden hair locks in this house are the ones on my teens' heads and I'm slowly making peace with that. Time waits for no one and waist sizes and hair follicles change with the passing of time. My beauty inspiration may be less Gisele Supermodel what's-her-name and more Helen Mirren nowadays. I'm learning the fine art of aging gracefully.

Even with the toque that waves.

Which is why, (yes, there is finally, 800 words later, a point to this prose) when I received a message on Facebook last week (thanks Maria) that someone was stealing the pictures I post on my Facebook page and passing them off as her own profile pictures, I chose laughter over frustration. 

It wasn't the first time it's happened, and likely, thanks to the grace of the Internet, it won't be the last. Some poor soul out there is so unhappy with how she looks that she chose the face of some random middle-aged blogger to pretend to be.

I know how it feels to be so desperately unhappy with everything about oneself that what is reflected back at you in a mirror saddens and dismays you. I live with the beauty of my youth reflected back at me every time I see my teenaged daughter and I know my reflection is not what it once was.

But, bland and boring coloured mullet hair aside, it's going to be all right. I've still got it going on, it just takes a moment more to see it. Joy and love is reflected with every crinkle in the corner of my eyes, persevering through the age spots and whiskers. It's a different type of beauty, but it's there.

I hope you find your beauty and your strength, anonymous photo thief. 

I hope that you can one day look in the mirror and laugh at the bad hair and love yourself through it.

At the very least, I hope you find the wisdom to steal pictures from someone who doesn't have to carefully angle the camera to hide her chin waddle and use a million filters to smooth out the wrinkles like I always have to.

But in case you don't, let me help you. Here's a picture you can use anytime you decide your own portrait is unbearable:

You're welcome.

Starvation By Shoe

Like taxes and death, there is one inescapable truth about life as a parent. Your kid is going to need new shoes, especially if your kid happens to be a teenaged boy. It doesn't matter how many pairs you've purchased in the past, your kid is going to inevitably grow, rendering his footwear obsolete.

It's like buying a new cell phone. By the time you get it home and set up, a newer model has already been released.

Teen boys and shoes are the low tech equivalent.

"Mom, I need new shoes."

"I just bought you new shoes."

"No, you bought me those shoes in the spring. They don't fit anymore."

Of course they don't. Teenaged boy feet don't care that you just porked out good money for sneakers only months before. Those bones are unstoppable. They just keep growing until your kid no longer has what resembles feet but instead has what resembles an oddly hairy ski stuck to the end of an equally hairy leg.

So I rolled my eyeballs and sighed heavily, a trademark of motherhood it turns out, decided grocery money was overrated and I drove the kid to the city to buy yet another new pair of sneakers.

That was in September. 

It took four stores, three malls, two iced coffees and the patience of a saint, but we finally found a store that carried a sneaker large enough to shod my kid's feet. Apparently every teenager with overgrown hooves had beat us to the punch and picked an entire city and every surrounding community nearly out of all ski-sized sneakers before us. 

By the time I got to that fourth store I was exhausted from being told there were no shoe sizes left in any of the shoes my son had deemed worthy of purchasing. So when the sales clerk approached us, I cut his sales pitch off at the knees and simply said, "Bring us all the giant-sized basketball shoes you have. I don't care what they look like. I don't care what colour they are. Just bring me the shoes."

My son tried to pitch a fit and impress upon me the importance of what the shoe looked like, but I was past caring.

"Don't mess with me kid or I'll find the sparkliest pinkest shoes in your size on the Internet. Anything is possible with the 'Net."

Nash knew I wasn't kidding and so he zipped it.

The sales clerk came back with three different options. All of them ugly, but all of them basketball shoes for kids with clodhopper feet.

After trying them all on, jumping around in the store like he was trying to rip the light fixtures from the ceiling and then minutes of gazing thoughtfully at each of the shoes while I practiced the motherhood trademark of sighing heavily and rolling my eyes, he chose a pair.

"These ones."

"Are you sure? Do they fit properly?"

"Yes, I'm sure. They fit."

"Are your toes touching the end? Do you have some room for those skis to grow? I don't want to be back here any time soon because these ones are too tight and your toenails are turning purple because the shoes are too small."

Which, you know, already happened the year before.

"No, they fit. There is loads of room for my toes to grow."

"Well I don't want loads of room Nash. I don't want them too big they become clown shoes while you're running. No one wants to pass Krusty the Clown the ball on the court."

"No MOM. THEY FIT."

I looked at him, I looked at the shoe and a voice in my head whispered, "The kid is almost 16. Surely he knows if his shoes fit properly. Give the kid a break."

Never listen to that voice. 

So I cut him a break, stopped busting his chops and I bought the shoes. It cost me 160 dollars on sale, but I wasn't in a position to argue about cost since this was the only store I could find with shoes that size and they were all the same price.

My kid left happily clutching his new kicks and I left knowing we could always eat next month.

Clown shoes.

Fast forward to December.

"Mom, I think need new shoes."

"Like heck you do. I just bought you new shoes."

"I know, but I don't think they fit properly. I think they're too big."

"What do you mean they're too big?"

"My foot slides forward when I run and it feels awkward."

Cue the eyeball roll and the heavy sigh. So I did what any responsible mother with a limited income would do. I told him to suck it up and live with it. "Eat your vegetables and I'm sure your feet will grow soon enough."

I must have had a crazy look in my eye because suddenly my kid was eating every vegetable in sight and he never mentioned his shoes again.

I figured his feet finally grew because that's what a 16-year-old boy's will feet do. I figured wrong. I figured that out when I watched my kid limp out of practice the other day. "What happened?" I asked as he pulled his sock and shoe off to show me his feet. His entire heel was bruised. 

"I keep landing wrong. My foot slides around and my heel is never where it's supposed to be." He looked at me with concern. "But don't worry about it, I'm sure my feet are growing."

Yes, just like his nose.

The boy brought his shoes home so his dad could check out the situation because apparently father knows best, and Bruce declared the shoe indeed too big. Thanks Tips. 

Apparently the shoe was just a tad big. (My husband's highly scientific assessment, not mine.) It was nothing an orthotic insert couldn't fix and maybe some newspaper stuffed in at the toes. Okay, I was only half jesting when I suggested that. Maybe. Nonetheless, a solution was settled upon, the shoes placed by the front door with a fresh set of custom orthotics, the boy tucked into bed to watch (likely) inappropriate videos on his iPad and I set about making a grocery list. This month we'd eat.

That's when I looked up and realized my 225-pound Mastiff puppy had one sneaker hanging from his mouth and the other sneaker shredded around the living room floor. Apparently teenaged ski-sized shoes are mighty tasty puppy-nip.

I may have cussed. Loudly enough to pry the teenaged boy away from the (likely) inappropriate videos on his iPad and venture out of his room to see what all the commotion was about. The look on his face when he saw his cursed sneakers strewn in pieces around the room was similar to the look he has when he's ripping open his presents on Christmas morning. Complete glee.

"Hey Mom, guess what?" he asked I was bent over sweeping up the carnage while trying to keep the dog from snitching pieces of shoe out of the dust pan.

"What?" I snarled.

"I need new shoes."

 ...

I guess we'll eat next month. Worst case scenario: I've heard 225 pounds of dog can feed a family of five for upwards of weeks.

Kidding.

Maybe.

Spin

When I was five I would stand outside in our back yard, with my eyes clenched shut, my arms spread out wide as though I had unfurled my wings to fly, and I would throw my head back and spin. I'd chase my invisible tail as I felt the wind wrap around my skinny little arms and watch the colours of the rainbow play behind my eyelids.

When I could no longer stand straight up as I spun I'd flop down onto the lawn and open my eyes to watch the world spin wildly while taking me with it. 

There was freedom in the spinning.

I stopped spinning like a mad little top after I tripped on my feet and crashed face first into a rock. The sharp edge of nature stabbed into my hairline by my temple and the sensation of blood oozing combined with the spinning skies caused my stomach to rumble in an altogether unpleasant way.

Spinning was no longer free. It now had a price.

I've not spun much since that moment. A few carnival rides here and some cartwheels there, both of which have had similar effects. But I've not enjoyed that same sense of wild abandon since I met the sharp end of that lone rock. I stopped chasing the spin only to find the spin has started to chase me.

My life has been whirling around in topsy-turvy jumble of sorts, as of late. But instead of those feelings of joyful freedom and glee, this spinning has ignited a storm of anxiety and sadness. I can't seem to stop the world tumbling around me no matter how wide I open my eyes. I can't find an anchor.

I did everything I knew to make life slow down. I read the books, I did the exercises. I breathed. 

Nothing worked and still the spinning continued.

I walked away from writing. From blogging. I isolated myself physically, distanced myself emotionally from many that I love. My fingertips are bloodied from all the things I've grasped at to make this spinning stop.

Life doesn't have an emergency stop button when you are feeling overwhelmed. Depression creeps in no matter how loudly you yell at it to go away. 

The world just keeps spinning.

Maybe the key to all of this is not to try and stop the spin but to remember that wild abandon I once felt when I was five and try to get back to that. 

Maybe the key is to try and feel the wind wrap around my arms like I did as a little girl and hope the wind doesn't blow so hard I can't catch my breath.

Maybe the key is just to spin and pray you don't land on any sharp objects when you fall.

Spin.