what they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. and when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. you open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. and you don't feel eleven at all. you feel like you're still ten. and you are--underneath the year that makes you eleven.
like some days you might say something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten. or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five. and maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay. that's what i tell mama when she's sad and needs to cry. maybe she's feeling three.
--woman hollering creek by sandra cisneros
it's not my birthday, but a sensitive, crying-easily week. it started with a bad haircut. when i expressed dissatisfaction to the stylist over the super-conservative cut she gave me, not anything like the pictures i showed her, she resorted to insults, mostly centered around my mama-hood. baffled, hurt, i had no words, only tears. like i was three. where'd all of my years of growing in grace & boldness go? thankfully my friend andee came to the rescue with a fix-up trim, & i'm almost back to the realm of the hip again after months of living in my post-partum grown-out hair frump. but what about the crying?
zack & gala were here this past weekend, and we were talking about what it's like to be a woman--for tears to be the gut response to so many things. it's beautiful & embarrassing all at once i guess. lately i find myself responding to so many things through tears. sometimes joy, sometimes nostalgia, sometimes a tiny sadness or hurt feelings, sometimes something in my spirit that's pricked, beyond understanding. i think i cry more easily in my thirties than i ever have before. what's this about?
4 comments:
I love you, mitchy! your tears are beautiful. I'm not in my 30s yet (359 more days till my decade of tears begins!), but my heart is so kindred to yours. we are grown ups & a little girls all at once. and my goodness, who is this horrible hairdresser!? LOVE, beCcA
Elle,
Oh, dear! I am sorry your week was hard and so sorry about that terrible hairdresser. Yikes... i know that sickly feeling when you go to get a cut and the hairdresser doesn't do it well. Those are so hard.
I love your tenderhearted soul and respect you deeply.
Thanks for sharing & for that storybook quote.
--Meg
dearlings! thanks for your comments. you are such tender-hearted women, too, & i LOVE that i can cry with you (on couches or vintage quilts, with tea, through joy & pain), & can't wait for the day when i can share a cozy afternoon with each of you. i miss you, faraway friends!
Oh, I feel you. I, a man, had been waiting on a good cry for months upon months. I just felt like something was bottled up. Then, and probably because I was feeling sick in the stomach at same time, I was going through a photo gallery of 9/11 victims' family members grieving at the remembrance pool in New York over the weekend. I just can't take images of people crying, or seeing them doing it in person. Makes me cry too. So that's just what I did, and it happened to be three days after my 29th birthday.
Good post. Thanks, Michelle.
P.S. Dreadful hairstylist! Be gone!
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