The Beauty Shop

 My aunt was a hairdresser. She had a shop in the front of the house and then in an addition built onto the back of the house. I think my grandmother wanted that addition to be her kitchen and wasn't happy. But the shop was cash. 

I had a teacher in my MFA program who wanted me to write about it. He thought a salon was an interesting space. Where mysterious things happened between groups of women. It is. 

I was a kid. My memories are more visceral than other memories from that time. 

I remember sitting in one of the chairs in a sun dress. My legs were sweaty and sticking to the plastic. My aunt was putting perm rods in my hair. The smell of various products, sprays and dyes and the perm solution filled the room with noxious fumes. And sweat. And perfume. 

I remember begging my aunt for a quarter so I could get a Pepsi from the small machine in her storage closet. 

There was a women named Tinny. She was wealthy. She and my aunt had been friends since high school. She came to get her hair done once a week. 

My aunt had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was scheduled for a double mastectomy. I understood it was serious, but I didn't really understand what was going to happen. I heard my aunt tell Tinny that it didn't matter because no one was using them. They laughed but Tinny looked uncomfortable and sad. 

It's only now, looking back into the fog of memory that the scene emerges. I know the dialogue was real.

Rabbit

 I remembered a man I worked with in New York this morning. He was huge. Taller than me. Wider than me. He had multiple piercings, short spiky air. I only remember one tat. He had a bar code on his arm, which apparently worked. The first time I saw him I wondered if needed to worry. 

He was the sweetest man. 

His uncle had been a butcher and taught him how to break down different animals. 

We had rabbit on the menu one month. I was on one side of a table, chopping. I realized he wasn't moving. And then I realized there were tears running down his cheeks. I looked at his cutting board. There was a rabbit. The company had skinned the bunny and removed the head but not the feet. The fuzzy little feet. Something about those feet broke him. He was a wreck. It was ironic in so many ways. 

He pulled it together. 

We got our prep done.

Dinner was served.  

Books

 If you look at the picture on my FB page, you see the big bunch of books I got for Christmas.  I've read about a third of them with a few others folded in. Every year (about this time) I talk about how full the bookshelves are. I usually talk about the chairs that are in front of them, which block the view. The shelves are closer to full than they've ever been. I'd like to do some reorganizing. but I need help. The reorganizing will probably empty a shelf or two. It's an obsession. 

I finished a book over the weekend and now I have a stack of three ready to go. Which one first? (Rubs hands together.) 

The weekend book was Ancestor Trouble by Maud Newton. Interesting. She tracks her family history and a wild bunch they were! She also talks about DNA and generational trauma. There were times when I was really caught up in the story and she'd go off on a long stretch about DNA research. It was interesting but also frustrating. We have some similarities in our life experience. It was interesting to think about the differences in who we became. The book was thought provoking. 

I feel like some amount of character is innate and some is developed. And some amount of who we are is inherited. And some amount we pick up on the streets.

Heh.