Hair Gone Wild

Life Balance: a feat we try to achieve while searching to be the best that we can we, while simultaneously raising our children to do the same. This is the equilibrium in our inner life force whereby our heartbeat matches the divine force that exists all around us. When this life balance peaks, our sense of peace, joy, love and wisdom act as one with our very soul.

"But we kick 'em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger."
-- Kesha in Tik Tok

"Mom, who's Mick Jagger?"

Vicky was loaded to the gills, packed with enough provisions and bedding to see us on a stagecoach trip out west for 2 weeks; I'm sure we wouldn't need much more than a fill-up in the 12 hour drive to Richmond. Coffee was in the thermos for Mom's 4 AM transfusion, suitcases & coolers were loaded in a trunk larger enough to hold a Pinto, but somehow barely fit when we added in Patricia's 3 suitcases (3? Who are you, Paris Hilton?) & cookies for the road-trip set on the front seat under Carmen, the Garmin. At 14 the twins have taken to naming everything we owned and the GPS was no exception.

And so the road-trip to Dinwiddie began. I awoke at 4 AM, brushed my teeth, woke the twins & my extra road-trip daughter, Patricia, kissed the dog, petted the husband & got in the car. Map? Check. Charlene's directions? Check. IPODs? Check. Okay, let's give Carmen Sheila's address. Carmen? Carmen? She's gone. Stolen out of the car. Oh well, here we go old school down to Virginia. Drive, drive, drive, miss a turn while I yawn outside Salamanca and reroute myself on the 219 down through PA. The IPOD gave out but Patricia's text date to Chad continued for 12 long hours, a few phone calls & numerous hangups. We switched to local radio during the construction season in PA and belted out "Satisfaction, I Can't Get No..." "Who's this Mom?" The Rolling Stones, you know, Mick Jagger? Really, turn it up. We belted the oldies from the 60's and 70's for the next hour, with Mom educating them on the groups. Next came technopop and then 80s revival with Mom telling them how she used to dance to MJ when he was just Michael Jackson. You? No, really I did. I had a life before you. And I had the hair to match, long permed, teased big hair you lose a toddler in.

Vacation isn't just for relaxing anymore. It's for connecting and lectures with Dr. Mom. Dear Hubby had to work so its just me, the twins & Patricia, cruising down the highway. The car symposiums on boys, romance, money, education and jobs. Choices, its all about choices made in a split second sometimes, but you make your head up long before if you're smart. Be smart. Focus, have a plan. Get your hair on straight. And so it goes on the last trip before high school.

Last night we got the hair cuts for high school, arguing all the way about length, color, high lights and style. Always style. Which one for Maggie, lack of it for Luke, which color of the week for Patricia, who is riding along with us just for the heck of it. The thing is, you'll start the high school with one style denoting who you are, but its all the choices you make in those 4 years that dictate the style you have when you leave; scholar, athlete, inventor, famous author or teen Mom, future cancer victim, future alcoholic, druggie or loser. It's all about those choices, some of which are made slowly, like choosing not to do homework daily, or some made in a split second when you choose to have sex without protection or hang out with new friends who get high everyday, even though you don't want to do that. Now. Make those choices now. Believe what we say about what they mean because we have already chosen that hairstyle before.

I think about that hair as I sit waiting to pay for the cuts. I think about the styles I have worn and will wear in the future as I someday become mother-in-law, grandma, great aunt, retired neighbor and maybe widow. I have friends already wearing the hairstyle of widow and widower in their 40s and 50s. I still have both my parents and get to be the kid sometimes, so its hard to contemplate that kind of hairstyle change, but it happens. But being ready to wear that hairstyle comes from all the other choices you made along the way.

Sometimes you choose to think of the style of your dreams and sometimes the style finds you from what you chose not to think about. Figure out which it will be.