Some stories take a while to write themselves: days, months, even years. This is Dancing on Halloween Morn.
Breathless. It’s Halloween morning. I haven’t been climbing stairs or jogging. The music’s loud. And I’m dancing in the kitchen.
October was a success. Each day, for a second or an afternoon, I peeled back the heavy translucent rubber windshield comprised of problem-solving, decision-making, chauffeuring, worrying. And I absorbed the colors and crispness of fall. Colors burned impressions that will take me through to the next season of cold, through the seasons of warmth, until I stand again at October 1st. Where I will prepare for that change which is now 47 years familiar. With Halloween here and the month of thankfulness beginning tomorrow, I’m full. Content. Like I just ate a big Thanksgiving dinner that was blessed with my granddad’s words.
I cook. I dance. And tonight I will be a witch. This morning, four years ago, I was GI Jane. My hair had started to fall out with the chemo, so I had it buzzed off at 7:30 a.m. in the salon, before the days’ clients, the regulars, opened the salon door. I was an irregular that morning.
This morning, I skipped the 3-product process to straighten, glossen, smoothen my bobbed, wavy hair. It dried naturally. Strings of velvet danced in the wind as I drove, windows down, that familiar route home from school drop-off. My fingers felt it and remembered. The short spikes of four years ago. Soft chicken fuzz. Tight, tight spiral curls. Loose curls. And now the luxury of these soft, wild, living waves.
So… we celebrate. Me and my hair. Loud music. A steady, heavy drum beat. We dance in the kitchen on Halloween morn.