Pinot and The Fig

This Weekend Was For…

…entertaining ourselves…

with friends with babies who brunch…while devouring french toast breadpudding, grape salad, & a plate of winter sunshine…while laughing with friends…with ample discussions about poop…by giggling at silly songs…while watching good basketball…and figuring out a plan for returning to work…while eating pralines galore…during lunch dates…on evening walks…by rolling over and puddles of drool…while reading books…and spying teeny tiny fingerprints…during breakfast for dinner…while wearing stretchy pants all day…every day…

…as a Mom and a Dad.

Monogamy

My grandmother used to visit her neighbor’s converted garage on Mondays to get her hair done. I remember sitting under the giant hair drying cupola, masking my face with the sleeve of my sweater while old women dyed their hair various shades of blue…with purpose. I often pretended to ignore their conversations, but it was hard not to eavesdrop about how the new owners of “The Restaurant” are changing the menu, or about how Hardies started selling fried chicken biscuits on Sundays, or how the Florist stopped delivering to the cemetery on Mondays, or that the bank on Main stopped handing out dog biscuits at the drive-through window. My grandmother and her hair “dresser” celebrated over 30 years of monogamy before she died in 2002. She “dressed” her hair in a magnificent shade of blue-gray with curls wound as tight as a yo-yo for her funeral viewing. 

I once had my hair stylist dump me to the curb when he had a calling for seminary school. He just up and left town, leaving me to suffer with the guy two chairs down with shaky hands who reeked of cloves and fennel. I was devastated and didn’t have my hair cut again for over a year.

A while back, I mentioned my bout with copper hair.  You know those moments when you think, “Damn, this isn’t funny.” And someone close to you says, “You’ll laugh about it later!” Well…I’ve thought long and hard about those moments of intense copperness while walking around with a dome the shade of a freshly minted penny, not to mention the $1000 in repairs that I could have spent at Anthropologie instead…and, yes, I may snicker about it..but laugh? Hardly.  

About a year ago, I broke it off with the hair stylist that saved me from immortal copper-dome 5 years ago.  I was pregnant…and exhausted…and nauseated…and lazy…and full of excuses, really.  She worked in a fancy salon downtown. And while she gave me a terrific cut, she was kind of a Debbie-downer. I usually left feeling somewhat unfulfilled with a lighter wallet and the same damn hairstyle with every visit to her chair. I’ve since realized that I went to her the same reason my Grandmother walked around with blue hair, or why the mothers on show “Dance Moms” continue to pay Abby Lee.  Have you seen it? Oh…me neither?…Anyways, these mothers send their talented daughters to this mean-spirited dance instructor who constantly abrades the self confidence away from everyone who comes into contact with her. Why do they stick around? Because it’s a comfortable routine and change is scary. Well I needed a change, and when a new salon opened up 1 block away that looked promising, I contemplated how to break it off after a 4 year relationship. I decided to just move on…no call…no text…no lies. I just left her. 

So the next day, I walked down the street and sat in someone else’s chair…guilt inching through my soul with every beat of my heart.  Oh my God, what was I thinking? I pondered with a puddle of sweat forming in the palms of my hands. I knew the minute the scissors touched my layers that I could never go back to her. She would know what I did.  But, my Lord, the head massage alone was enticing. We had small neutral chit-chat between cuts…nothing too serious…nothing too invasive…simple. The way she dried my hair while brushing my scalp with prickly round brushes made my spine tingle. And when she whipped the chair around revealing a glamorous ‘do, I about cried. It was beautiful… and you better bet I looked in every reflective object on my way home. I went back to her 3 times.

This past weekend, I had an appointment scheduled for 2:45pm on Sunday…which apparently was for 1:45pm. A symptom of new-mom syndrome, I showed up an hour late by mistake.  Here I was, out of the house for the first time in days, and I put makeup on for crying out loud! “I recently had a baby, and I really need this haircut to happen. My hair is falling out. It is horrifying!” I explained to the receptionist. So the owner of the salon took a few steps toward me, rubbing his leathery hands -smelling of hair dye and coffee- through my thinning locks. He said, “Darling…you don’t look like you just had a baby. You look amazing! I’ll cut your hair.”

I said, “Thank you!” with a newfound love for the compliment-giving man. And within 5 minutes, I was sitting in another hair stylist’s chair feeling guilty and exhilarated. He chopped 5 inches off, and with every clump of hair that drifted slowly into my lap, I contemplated the monogamy of hair salons. I thought, Why should I feel guilty? I’m a paying client. Why should I feel nervous about trying out someone new?  

And when he finished and swung the chair around revealing a new and improved mommy-cut in the mirror, I asked for his card.  He glanced around his shoulder spying my usual hair stylist as she ran her brush through another client’s hair.  With one eyebrow raised and the sneakiest of hand gestures, his card landed in my pocket. 

This Weekend Was For…

Capturing a Moment.

We spent two weeks exploring the love hotels in Tokyo and the magnificent temples and monasteries of Kyoto.  They say…”You’ve seen one temple, you’ve seen them all.”  They fib.  Every temple and monastery holds individual beauty with monks holding silence and birds hummed off-tune. And while my memory of each individual one, in fact, blurs…my mind often revisits a monastery bordering Kyoto that we traveled to during a cold winter month in 2004.

We climbed a dirt hill approaching a flat of land overlooking a spectacular view of snowcapped mountains and glorious willowing trees that only Japan deserves. He grabbed my right hand and squeezed while acknowledging the gratitude of my presence with his.  With my left hand, I reached for my camera.  A moment deserving of being captured.  The battery of the camera lost all power the second my finger pressed down to snap that picture.  I gasped as my heart raced with emotions.  Shit. Dead battery! I mumbled with grief.

“It’s ok, Baby. Just look at how beautiful this moment is.  Capture this in your mind.  Who cares about the picture? This is for us only. Savor it.”

I sighed finding it impossible to believe that the details of that moment would stay with me and not vanish.

…the crisp breeze…his hand warming mine in the pocket of his jacket…the sound of pebbles and dust settling beneath our feet with every step…the robed Monks meditating in the opened rooms below…trees bowing to them with grace as the scent of garlic drifted in gusts of wind…and the clouds covering the mountains as the sun shed rays of light over the valley floor…our bodies finding warmth in the shade together.