Little Girls, Long Hair

Combing the tangles out of Bisou's coat the other day--a process she does not enjoy but for putting up with which she gets small bits of mozzarella--I thought about some hair issues that arose over Christmas concerning my granddaughter, V.

V is in second grade, and has long hair.  Not long enough to sit on, but long enough to cause problems with knots.  The trouble is that V wants long hair, but doesn't want to deal with the ensuing tangles--especially the ones at the base of the skull, which are both the biggest and the hardest to reach.

Over the holiday week, everyone in the house--parents, grandparents and aunties--volunteered to very gently brush out V's hair.  But she turned us down.  We then suggested that she get it cut--not, God forbid, like a boy's or anything--but short enough so that it wouldn't hurt so much.  But she wouldn't hear of that.

One of the persons offering to help with the detangling was V's Auntie A, who, back when she was in second grade, had even longer hair than V, and tons of it.  Like V, A refused to have her hair cut, and turned down my offers to brush it for her.  The summer she was eight years old, A took swimming lessons, and you can imagine the effect of frequent baths in chlorine on already-tangled, sweat-coated hair.

One day, A finally agreed to let me help untangle the mess.  I found the comb with the widest teeth, and went to work as gently as I could, gripping a hank of hair with one hand, holding it away from the scalp to minimize the tugging, while slowly combing out the snags with the other.  But tugging was inevitable, and A put up with it without protest, although under the tent of hair I saw her shoulders shaking--she was crying silently.  I don't know which made me feel worse, the fact that I was hurting her, or the knowledge that she was taking responsibility for the pain, and being brave.
 
But back to V.  Inevitably, her mother had to step in and detangle.  There were tears.  I left the room, unable to watch, and wondered, what is it with little girls and long hair?  Why, in this enlightened age, do they feel that it is worth the pain?  Do they believe that long hair is beautiful, and beauty is worth suffering for?  What do they think would happen to them if they were less beautiful, but more comfortable?

Is this a cultural phenomenon or a predisposition towards masochism embedded in that pair of X chromosomes?

Unlike V, and A before her, poor Bisou isn't free to cut her hair, which is why she gets bits of cheese while I work on her mats.

The Snail

My five-year-old grandson spent several days in Vermont last June. He and his sister, who live in Philadelphia, rejoiced in their contacts with the local wild life: “Look, a butterfly! And here's another one! They're all white, and they're flying around the broccoli!”

Even though it rained every day while they were here, we filled up the kiddie pool and let them splash around in it. But the biggest thrill came next morning, when the kids discovered that a dozen tiny frogs had colonized the pool overnight.

The age-old human instinct to make pets out of wild animals expressed itself strongly in my grandchildren. Fortunately, the frogs were too difficult to catch, let alone bring inside. Snails made for slower prey, however, and my grandson put one in a jar and provisioned it with garden greens and placed it on the dining room table where he could keep an eye on it for as long as he was here.

Last week, as his mother was buying him snow boots for the Christmas trip to Vermont he said, “I hope they've taken good care of my snail. I can't wait to see it.”

Sweet, no? And sad. And it puts me in a quandary. I can tell him, in good faith, that his frog friends are in hibernation and will be ready to greet him and his sister again next summer. But the snails....I don't know how close to the equator a snail has to be to survive year-round, but in these latitudes, anything as soft and slimy as a snail is dead and gone well before Halloween, at best leaving fertile eggs in some well-protected spot to hatch out in the late spring.

Do I sit this child by the fire and hand him a cookie and tell him this biologically correct tale of perished snails and Nature red in tooth and claw? Or do I spin him some kindly story of his snail snoozing away the winter (like frogs, like bears) waiting for summer so it can play with him in the rain-soaked garden all over again?

Please advise. He'll be here on Tuesday.

Lost In The Woods

The day before my family departed, I organized an expedition to my favorite old pine tree in the woods behind our house.

As expeditions go, it was to be a short one—10 minutes round-trip—since we were taking grandchildren (Violette, 6, and Remy, 5), and lame Lexi, whom I couldn't bear to leave behind. Wolfie came along, too, and my husband and daughter. Because we'd only be gone a few minutes, I decided the dogs needed neither collars nor leashes. Nor did I need to change out of my dress.

The pine tree, which I visit often, is southeast of the house, right next to a stand of white birches. This time, because we were trying to organize three adults, two children, and the dogs, we left the yard by a slightly different route, and somehow the birches and the pine tree were nowhere to be seen.

“No matter,” we said, “we'll just head downhill for the swamp, which must be huge after all this rain, and then go back home.”

We walked downhill, the dogs scampering ahead, the children marveling at mushrooms. We found a number of tiny creeks, the result of the recent downpours, but the swamp wasn't where we thought it should be.

“We'd better just go back to the house,” I said. I was aware that any minute the children might get hungry—it was almost lunch time-- or thirsty, or tired. And I was worried about Lexi overdoing it.

We climbed back up the hill...and instead of our house, we saw another hill. Remy, thank goodness, still thought we were looking for the swamp. But Violette knew that we were lost, whereupon she set up a Cassandra-like wail: “We're lost, we're lost, we'll never get out of here! I'm tired, I can't go another step, please carry me, pleeeeease, I'm dying! Help! We're lost! We'll never get back!.” She kept this up while striding valiantly over stone walls, thorny bushes, and muddy creeks. I tried to explain to her that screaming uses energy, which she should conserve, but six-year-olds are not into energy conservation.

The woods were beautiful. There was birdsong, and a cool breeze, and no bugs. We came upon a magical little pond, perfectly round, with a tiny pier, that we'd never seen before. The dogs drank. It was cloudy, and midday, so we could not orient ourselves by the sun. We had no idea where we were.

We kept going. I thought of Little Red Riding Hood, walking through the woods to her grandmother's house. I thought of Hansel and Gretel and their organic GPS. I thought of Dante, lost in a wood in the middle of his life.

We came upon another magical spot—a stone walk leading down steps to a stone-lined pool the size of a hot tub, the whole surrounded by lilies and raspberry bushes, and not a soul in sight. Lexi was slowing down and limping noticeably. Would we have to carry her, and the kids, and for how long?

With Violette's laments ringing in our ears, we found a small Christmas tree farm, and knew that we were a long way from home, since there are no tree farms in the vicinity of our house. Next to the Christmas trees was a beautifully-tended apple orchard, and blueberry bushes, and a vegetable garden and, God-be-praised, a farmer, straight out of Norman Rockwell, who told us that we had ended up on Betts' Bridge Road.

That meant that to get home we'd have to walk a good fifteen minutes along a two-lane highway, with two leashless and collarless dogs. Ed said he'd cut across some more woods and fields and come back in the truck to get us. Too weak to argue, we waved good-bye and sat under a tree by the side of the road—like gypsies, I thought. It had been two and a half hours since we'd left the house.

The dogs lay down and panted. Violette shrieked at a daddy longlegs. Remy put his head on my lap and broke a stick into “bullets.” I fretted about what we would do if Ed never came back.

But he did, and we all piled into the truck and went home and had lunch.

Voices

One by air and four by ground, my descendants departed yesterday, and with them the voices, high and low, that had echoed in my mind for a week and a half: “Can we go outside? Is there any more butter? Can we bring the frog inside? Do you want more coffee? Can we go out in the rain?”

Then it was “Good-bye, see you soon, thanks for everything!”

And then, silence.

“Here we are, alone again,” my husband said.

But not exactly. In the quiet, I heard another chorus, one that had been muted in the preceding happy days. It was the animals. This chorus was not loud; it had nothing to do with barks or baas or clucks; but it came through loud and clear once the human sounds were gone.

“Notice how I place my head next to your foot,” Wolfie said. “See how we cluster around you, hoping for some petting” said the goats. The chickens, out in the field in their portable summer home, said “We haven't seen you much lately. Who are you?” And old Lexi said, “Notice how relaxed I am, now that I'm no longer worried about being stepped on.”

There is nothing like a house full of voices—little voices, and formerly-little voices that now speak with authority and wisdom.

Then the silence descends again. But if I listen, the quiet voices of my animals come through and fill my heart.

We all comfort ourselves as best we can.