A New Look
Photo cred: @michellecomptonphotography
It’s those little brown curls for me. They are just a little too overgrown and don’t respond well to even my most earnest attempts at grooming. My hands instantly reach down towards his head and run my fingers through them. I manage to get a few seconds of this in before I hear “Mama! Stop!”.
My husband and I agree on many things. How pretzels should always be served with beer cheese. How the toilet paper should go over instead of under. How our boys are the absolute lights of our lives. But we do fundamentally agree on the length of our children’s hair. He is a man with very little hair, and as a result, he wholeheartedly believes his kids should have all the hair they want while they still have it. I… disagree. And while I do love myself a good finger-comb through his soft brown curls, I usually end that tender moment by saying “It’s time for a haircut, bud.”
Carson carefully chooses the police car from the wide array of seating options at our local haircut place — which is slightly overpriced and features far too many primary colors for my liking. To be honest, we both come out of that experience just a little overstimulated. I place him gently in the seat and he starts to adjust the steering wheel and lights as if he has somewhere important to be, someone to save. Not 15 minutes later, we’re done. I walked in a shaggy little toddler, and I am taking home a preteen.
“Mama, I’m handsome,” he looked up towards me and said, as we walked out the door.
“Yes, baby. You are.”
His new look.
***
I was inspired by the Coffee and Crumbs newsletter a few months ago to “stay in the game”. What does that even mean? Had I really been “out of the game”? Yes, yes — actually I had been. I will admit to you I hadn’t written in months — months. What was once a passion and an outlet I counted on routinely turned into something I no longer was able to make space for. I can’t point to one thing that impacted this, but rather an intricate mosaic of tiny little excuses. Too tired, too busy, the kids are too sick, or too many other things on my brain. All of these are true, of course, but I began to let these excuses be the rule and no longer the exception.
Creativity tends to come in waves for me, and let’s just say the surf hasn’t been very good lately. A jump-start was needed to get me back in the game. I’ve long been needing a crisp new canvas to light the writing flame again. Something simple, yet me. Something that helped the words flow a little better and grease the writing wheels a bit.
So, welcome! Here we are again. Pleased to re-meet you, or meet you for the first time. Same me, just with a new (and hopefully improved) digital look. I can’t promise I won’t disappear again, and I can’t promise that the momentum here will be consistent or steady. But what I can promise is that it will look cute.
My new look.
