I just looked up and saw a picture of Jordan in its frame. This picture, a Christmas picture, was taken while she was in daycare, when she was about three years old. She’s holding a fake present and her wispy little-girl hair is up in the ponytail that I kept on top of her head. You see I was adamant that she would not have bangs. That was very important to me at the time. Who even knows why? Some childhood anger I had at my mom for cutting my own bangs, maybe?
Apparently what wasn’t important to me was to get the ponytail straight, or to get all of her hair into it. Or maybe, the pictures were taken after she had been at daycare for a while, and some Baylor student/daycare-teacher had redone her hair. A college co-ed who wouldn’t put the same love and care into my child’s ponytail as I would. How could she understand that 15 years later, I’d still be looking at that picture, when it would remind me of just how much we have changed, and accomplished, in this long strange trip.
But the truth is, I probably wouldn’t have put much more effort into her hair than that Baylor student. Because, I was probably younger than that student at the time. I probably didn’t understand the lasting importance of that picture any more than she did. And, honestly, I couldn’t get that wispy hair to stay put, no matter how hard I tried. I didn’t learn about gel and hair-wax until the gymnastics years.
But the real reason I know I wouldn’t have been so particular with her hair is because the thing that caught my eye about that picture just now is the glittery band aid that I used to hold it in place in the frame. I guess I was out of tape. Well the band aid didn’t hold up. Fifteen years later, the picture, and the band aid, have both slipped.
A band aid? What in the world was I thinking? I was just a kid, and a late bloomer at that. Just making do. It’s a miracle we survived at all. But we did. And I have to say, we both turned out to be very creative problem solvers.
I guess I need to replace that band aid and fix that picture at some point. But first, I’m going to take a digital picture of it. Because, in fifteen years, I might look back on this day and wonder what in the world I was thinking, “fixing” something that was just fine as it was, an artifact that tells a much truer story than the staged Christmas scene in the actual picture.
