She Wants To Be A Writer

She let me dry her hair tonight.

Usually, we let it air-dry after her bath. By the time she gets out and gets dressed, we’re tired. Ready for the day to melt into evening. But in the mornings we all pay the price when she screams as the brush makes its halting way through her tresses.

Today during our weekly shopping trip I wandered down the hair-care aisle, eyes scanning the shelves for something, anything that would help get her wild locks under control. I settled on rose-scented leave-in conditioner.

We got them from the tub in tandem; he took the girl, I took the boy. Towels, lotion and diaper. PJ pants and a shirt. Her collar was soaking wet.

Baby girl, I said. Tonight Mama is going to dry your hair with the quiet hair dryer.

Oh! How she protested. But the blooming rose on the pleasingly shaped bottle worked its magic on my little girl, the embodiment of P.T. Barnum’s famous statement about fools and their money.

I spritzed her head and aimed the dyer. I pulled the brush gently through the shiny dark waterfall of hair and let it fall between my fingers, felt it tickle my wrists.

Mom! Mom, the hot air in my pants makes me sweaty!

She squirmed, I smiled. Soon a silken ribbon of hair laid beautifully flat from brow to back. I turned her to me, tucked a stray tendril behind one ear.

She ran off to show her father. I sat on her bed and thought about a heart-stopping moment earlier in the day, when she thudded down the stairs from her pink seashell of a bedroom.

Dad, will you staple my book together? I wrote a book. That’s what I’m going to do when I grow up. I want to sell books.

I thought you didn’t want to have a job, her father replied, a chuckle in his throat.

I do! I do want a job! I want to be a writer. A writer, like Mom.

My breath caught in my chest.

A writer.

Like Mom.

A life filled with words can be as sharp and cutting as the fine edge of a blank sheet of paper. It is a life hard-earned. It is not an easy life, but instead is fraught with rejection, judgment and repeated, bruising injuries to heart and soul. It is hard work for little reward beyond the private satisfaction of creating something beautiful, if only once.

In some ways, being a writer is a lot like being a mother.

My girl has long, dark hair that falls in soft waves down her back. It resembles mine, but is far more beautiful, as if by passing it down to my child it became a distilled, more pure version of my own.

She is she and I am me, but forever we are entwined. I hope with all my might that her life is like her tresses; better, brighter than mine.

Tagged as: daily, motherhood, The Poo