When I was about seven or eight I can remember going to the mall, seeing this store called Bojangles, and wanting to have my ears pierced.  Mama and Daddy were with me of course and my mother had never had her ears pierced either.  We asked Daddy what he thought.  Next I found myself sitting in a chair while two teenage girls armed with blue markers and piercing guns proceeded to “shoot” me at the same time.  I can just remember a sort of simultaneous “BLAM!”  My nervous mother made me go first!  And so we both came out with instructions on how to clean around our earrings until we could take them out.  About a year later I got stuck in a turtleneck sweater and seriously freaked out.  When I tried to pull it back down it ripped my right ear but not all the way through.  So I went back and had it repierced a little above the torn one.  You can still see the line but I am just thankful it stopped short of splitting my lobe open through the bottom of my ear.  I realize ear piercing is a cultural thing world wide, with many varying opinions.  I wanted to let my girl choose if and when she wanted hers pierced.  She asked me if she could get them done for her seventh birthday and we asked her daddy what he thought.  The next thing you know we were at an ear piercing salon aptly named La Lobe.  Things were done much more professional there.  They used a needle because it is more precise.  Once again feeling I had come full circle, I went first.  I decided to share the experience with my daughter, just as my mother did with me.  Only I sought to correct my crummy uneven holes.  The piercer placed them higher (so as I age my ears won’t droop with the weight of heavy earrings) and she also made them equal on both sides.  I felt like a kid again, remembering what my daughter would go through, and my faux diamonds were fantastically positioned.  Just as when I was a child, our little one got pink tourmaline studs.  Not only is that her favorite color; it is both her birthstone and mine.  While acceptable now in almost every culture on earth, ear piercing is in fact a form of body modification.  Its history dates at least as far back as the oldest discovered human mummy.  There are references to ear piercings in the Bible.  Tribes from Africa, Turkey, Polynesia, and Northern and Southern Native Americans have been piercing their ears for ritualistic purposes for eons.  Lest one assume it isn’t European or just for women, in the late 1500’s the English Renaissance spurred an ear piercing fashion trend among “refined” gentlemen.  According to a record written by the clergyman William Harrison, upper class men would wear gold, stone, or pearl earrings then.  I dated an Apache boy in college straight off the reservation.  He had long, jet black hair cascading down to his bottom, with both multiple piercings and tattoos long before they were in vogue.  My mother almost had apoplexy but he fascinated me.  He had even done the “Sun Dance” which is a ceremony practiced by indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada.  After European colonization of the Americas, laws were passed intended to suppress native cultures and encourage assimilation.  Many ceremonies were banned, native languages were not allowed to be spoken, and sacred ceremonies prohibited.  Sun Dance ceremonies more often than not involve young men being fastened to a pole by the skin of their chests or backs for many days regardless of weather.  I eventually married a man whom I adore; he truly is my soul mate.  He has no tattoos or piercings and I like him that way.  At one of our engagement parties my future mother-in-law had fans made with funny quips about marriage.  My favorite was from the American comedian Rita Rudner, who said, “Men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage — they’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry.”  Both my husband and I truly hope our little girl will limit herself to this one piercing.  So, as my little one and I go through our piercing journey together I am reminded of my heritage, of history and of rituals and of bonding.  My little baby officially became a little girl in my eyes after getting pierced.

Hair:  In the King James version of the Holy Bible, 1 Corinthians 11:15, it says, “But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her:  for her hair is given for her as a covering.”  While many may not believe it, major accredited studies have revealed that Native Americans recruited for war had superlative skills only if allowed to keep their hair.  Anglo culture has been forcibly removing native peoples’ hair, particularly males’, for centuries — even in our time.  Hair is an extension of the nervous system, and can be seen as exteriorized nerves; a type of highly evolved “antennea” that transmit vast amounts of important information to the brain stem, the limbic system, and the neocortex.  I waited 41 years to have a child.  And, by the grace of God, He gave me one.  She came out of my body with strawberry blonde, straight hair just like mine.  I have watched it evolve from peach fuzz, to straight, short “boy hair”, to curls like Shirley Temple, to a glorious mane like that of a horse — lush and thick and full of life.  Recently my only child had eye surgery.  The doctor actually cut two muscles in each of her eyes.  I had been terribly worried about her and the outcome.  Surprisingly, my tears only flowed when she got three inches cut off her virgin hair.  For seven years it remained untouched.  Seven is a sacred number both in Biblical terms and also in indigenous ones.  The Constitution of the Iroquois Nation, the confederation of which the U.S. original thirteen colonies’ political system was influenced, was based on the philosophy that in their every deliberation, they must consider the impact of their decisions on the next seven generations.  Recently, some of Marie Antoinette’s jewels were given to Sotheby’s auction house.  I believe a huge, natural pearl went for the most money but, if I could have, I would have chosen to buy the locket which contained her hair.  I recall as a child seeing my mother’s red hair in her baby book which my grandmother had cut and my own reddish blonde hair in my baby book which my mother had cut and preserved.  Now my little one’s hair will go in her baby book, and someday I hope to see her place her own daughter’s hair in it.  The story of Sampson and Delilah in the Bible, in my opinion, has a lot of truth encoded in it.  When she cut his hair, the once undefeatable Sampson fell.  Some cultures still feel a woman’s hair must not be seen, unless it is by immediate family.  I personally do not believe one’s hair is something to remain hidden; rather I believe it must be allowed to be free.  In centuries past it was customary for a young girl to wear her hair down; wearing it up was a sign she was married.  Whatever your beliefs, I hope and pray we all respect one another’s cultural and spiritual beliefs about hair.

Perhaps I am partial but I have always marveled at my daughter’s beautiful eyes.  She truly looks as if she could have stepped out of a Renoir painting, perhaps “Girl with pink bow.”  My mother was half-French; half-Irish and she definitely has the Gallic eyes of her ancestors.  Somehow, I see a lot of my husband in her eyes, perhaps it is because they are both so very dark.  I remember my mother telling me they’d calculated the odds of me having light eyes and it was over 1 in 100,000.  My half-Choctaw, half-German father had the deepest, darkest, bluest eyes I have ever seen.  They were framed by impossibly long, thick, jet black eyelashes while my very white mother had light brown eyes that perfectly matched her natural red hair.  She used to say she had no eyelashes or eyebrows.  She actually did, they were just white blonde.  So along I came right in the middle — very tanned skin, reddish blonde hair, and greenish eyes.  My husband has beautiful, thick brown hair and I realize my own gene pool.  Delusionally, I truly somehow thought I would have a blonde-haired, blue eyed child.  She did arrive that way, but her peach fuzz hair turned more auburn and her eyes went so dark it took the eye doctor a special light just to see her pupils.  I started having to wear glasses in the first grade, and I fervently hoped my little one wouldn’t have to so young.  Not that there is anything wrong with it — I just remember trying to keep my glasses pushed up whenever I looked down to read or I got too sweaty.  Looking at her for so long, I have always thought one eye was a little close set.  We’d taken her early on to an eye specialist and they tested her in kindergarten.  Thankfully she was always fine.  And then this year I got a call from the school nurse.  I could tell from her tone it was not good.  At first I feared she’d broken another bone.  Instead she reluctantly informed me that my child was legally blind in her GOOD eye (20/100) and 20/200 in her other.  Everyone at her school seemed shocked, as she had never squinted or exhibited any discernible trouble seeing.  I was assured the tests were correct, as it was measured by some gazillion dollar computer.  Trying not to bawl, I scheduled my first grader with an eye specialist.  It would seem we would be seeing his son; both of whom specialized in strabismus, a misalignment of the eyes.  Upon her initial exam, the doctor informed me our child needed surgery:  not glasses; not eye patches; just a surgical procedure that would entail snipping the insides of her eye muscles close to her nose as well as the ones on bottom.  I was told the surgery had been around for decades and the rate of success was high.  Also, the need for having to repeat the procedure was low.  I thought I was prepared for her surgery.  Although we are blessed to have a very healthy child she has had laser surgery twice on a facial birthmark at around two, endured an endoscopy and colonoscopy at just four to learn she is gluten intolerant, and at five she broke her elbow on the monkey bars at school, resulting in an hour and forty-five minute surgery and stainless steel pins which would be removed only with the aide of pliers sometime later.  This was a twenty minute surgery which felt like forever.  She was extremely sick from the anesthesia and the whites of her eyes filled completely with blood.  We have been stared at a lot in the grocery store but mostly from adults who seemed genuinely concerned.  Like my mother, her namesake is tough as nails!  She rebuffed insults and endured gawks with equal panache.  The school nurse did call me to come get her the first day back because she was worried my girl might fall.  She still has “crooked” vision and sees two of things, but the doctor says her eyes are working for the first time to see in tandem.  And to think we had absolutely no idea.  The great American author Helen Keller, who was the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree at a time when most women were not deemed worthy of an education, once said this:  “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”  I am so grateful to God that my sensitive, caring child has kind, intelligent eyes with which to see.

Growing up Halloween was a holiday I enjoyed but did not get to fully celebrate.  We lived in a very low income apartment complex and my folks didn’t feel it was safe to trick-or-treat there.  I do have fond memories of going to Harry Stone Recreation Center where they had a scary haunted house and free carnival games that allowed you to “win” candy.  It was a short span of time, though, where Halloween for me was both cool and scary.  Church Halloween functions were mostly lame because some felt the holiday was Satanic.  Fast forward through my adulthood until I had a baby.  She was not even two weeks old and I remember dressing her up as a cat.  I had the onesie, the tiny socks, and the knit hat.  “Look!  You’re a kitty!” I exclaimed to her in the nursery … and she cried.  The next Halloween she just turned one and I really wanted us all to dress in a family theme.  Since we have wolf-hybrids it seemed obvious.  Our baby was Little Red Riding Hood, I was the wolf, and poor Daddy was left to be the Grandma.  I’m not gonna lie — it was HILARIOUS!  The next year I managed to finagle him into going as “The Crazy Cat Lady” in the same hot pink, fleece ladies’ housecoat he used when he was Grandma.  Only this time he had cats coming out of his “nightgown” and hanging off his head, which was a surprisingly convincing wig full of hot pink rollers.  That year I laughed so hard I actually wet my pants a little.  Well, my very strait-laced, conservative husband had enough.  I scarred him so badly he refused to even dress at all the next year!  Our little one was the French girl Madeline from the classic book series and I hoped Daddy would be the nun, Miss Clavel.  I intended to be the tiger:  “To the tiger in the zoo, Madeline just said, “Pooh-pooh.”  But the hubs completely rebelled.  So I wound up going as the Head of School, Miss Clavel.  Visiting my ailing mother at the nursing home was a surprise; the very elderly there looked unnerved, as if I were there to read them their last rites.  I just wanted Mama to see Maris’ costume.  She was a perfect red-haired French school girl even complete with her dog Genevieve.  The next year I got Burk back on board with the family theme by letting him dress in a profession he has always loved — an airplane captain.  I was a flight attendant and our little girl went as a mirror image of Shirley Temple.  I put her in a blue and white sailor suit and handed her a giant (very fake) lollipop.  It was amazing, wherever we went people recognized her!  It transcended age, gender, and race.  I tried showing her a video of the song, “On the Good Ship Lollipop” to explain to her “Bright Eyes” was back in 1934.  I learned it wasn’t a ship at all; rather it was an airplane, hence our flight uniforms.  Burk cut such a dashing figure the next year he agreed to be a ship’s captain, while our child of the sea made a STUNNING “Little Mermaid.”  I went as just a generic one.  The next year my little French girl went as Belle from “Beauty and the Beast.”  Daddy got to be the beast, of course, and I went as the “enchanted rose” in all black, literally holding a replica of the glowing rose that floats suspended in midair underneath the glass dome.  This year I thought my poor husband should go as something HE wanted to be.  So, knowing his love for the “high strange” I bought him a very convincing Big Foot costume.  Our little one wants to be a veterinarian so I got her scrubs, a dog and cat themed surgical mask, a doctor’s cap, and a lab coat that read “Animal Hospital” on the back complete with clear pouch to show her identification.  I went as the “office cat” that lives at the vet’s and hangs out to greet other animals.  The family tie-in?  The very elusive Big Foot decided to come out of the woods seeking medical help for his hurt toe.  (Note the bandage in the pic.)  Since our little girl is not sure if she only wants to stick with domesticated animals or branch out into wildlife; it was a fit.  (Wink)  This was our second year going to the Boo Bash and my husband was scaring the spit out of every young woman working there.  I could tell when he lumbered by because some girl with a tray full of drinks would jump and shriek.  I finally ordered him to take off the mask — imagine what it could do to the children!  Mary Kay Ash was a tremendously successful businesswoman from Texas who lived in Dallas to the age of 83.  I love what she once said:  “Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.’  Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.”  I grew up watching wealthy people make assumptions about me and my family.  Either we couldn’t really be that smart, or cultured, or we must somehow be “lower class.”  What I was delighted with is that we had been members of our own country club for a year now.  I didn’t want to join to feel important; I did want to join to feel as if I belonged.  I like dressing up and didn’t mind we were one of the few families to do so.  Life is short and it is precious.  I am thankful to have a sweet husband who will generally go along with our family-themed dress-ups.  More importantly, I am proud to have a child who ran into the arms of the Head Chef because he remembered to make her something gluten-free.  While others were throwing around names and trying to impress, we spent our time mostly talking to the help.  I am not only more comfortable with them; I know what it is like to grow up feeling “less than” for no reason at all.  The legacy I hope to leave my daughter is that everyone is important — and they should be made to feel that way.  My tenderhearted child will make an excellent veterinarian if she chooses to stay with it, because she recognizes the value in all of God’s creatures.  And there was certainly a mix present this Halloween at the Boo Bash.

Our little one was turning seven and my thoughts were turning, as they often do, to my early childhood in the 1970’s.  I always love a good theme and I figured rollerskating would be a great seven/seventies themed birthday party.  When I was a kid I was fortunate enough to have had two birthday parties at this same roller rink.  Only in those days, they had up to two birthday parties at once all mixed in with “regular” skaters and you had your cake in one of the birthday rooms.  Now I was able to get the entire rink just for her and her whole first grade class.  Instead of asking the DJ for requests I just gave him my two-and-a-half-hour long disco iTunes playlist.  Pretty soon the great skating music of my childhood filled the rink once again.  KC and the Sunshine Band and Chic, my two favorite bands with the best disco hits, pulsed and thumped as I made my way around the rink.  The parents didn’t look bored and I was pleased to see so many skating, playing air hockey, or just grooving to the music and hanging out in the snack bar.  I may have done this party a little early, as most kiddos had never skated.  But what a fun time!  Kids fell and they survived.  I taught them the movements to “YMCA” and took turns spinning little girls in circles until we all got dizzy.  The place was ours and I was in heaven.  We had pizza, Dr. Pepper (such a no-no now) and the cutest/best-tasting gluten-free birthday cake ever.  It was iced with an old-school roller-skate, complete with toe stop, on a pink background with multi-colored shell swirls on the side.  The party favors read, “Thanks for rolling with me” and I think both the boys and the girls genuinely had a blast.  Apparently it is a trend at our daughter’s school to have only girl or only boy parties.  I am proud that we had a mix of kiddos there, all having a good time and learning to skate.  The sweetest thing for me was watching an adorable little boy with a head full of curls using his mother’s quarters to try and get my little one the stuffed wolf inside the toy claw machine.  I do not see how anyone ever wins those!  Shyly and triumphantly, two little boys presented the plush wolf to her and my heart cracked.  It was just so sweet and thoughtful!  The late American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world.  Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”  Here was this little boy who knew my daughter lived with wolf-hybrids and wanted to get her this prize.  The seventies were a lot about social and political change — in my opinion for the better.  It saw reforms for women in the workforce and “equality” for people of color.  It was a time when folks thought of others and the world.  I would have traded any gift for the thoughtfulness this little boy had shown my daughter, and thus my heart was renewed, skating back to the ’70’s.