During our family Christmas get together, my cousin tells me about her recent, very disappointing haircut and how upset she’d been about it. When she’d gotten home, as she’d lamented the result, her husband had sent the kids over to cheer her up. Her four-year-old son sang a delightful song about how beautiful she was. After he’d finished, her six-year-old daughter came up, put her hand on her mom’s arm, and asked, “Are you sad because it looks the same as it did before?”
I laugh.
But I remember how a few years ago, I’d gotten a haircut of my own. And how I’d been disappointed by it too.
Not because the stylist hadn’t done as I’d asked. But because he had and I hadn’t been any different than I’d been before.
I’d wanted the haircut to make me a new me.
A better me.
A kinder, nicer, different me.
But shedding a few handfuls of inches of hair hadn’t changed me at all.
Away from the salon and back at the house, standing in front of the mirror, I’d wanted to cry. I’d wanted to scream into the universe’s void. I’d wanted to transform.
For most of my life, I’ve liked who I was, who I am. I’d shared the sentiment with my grandmother of being one of those lucky ones who enjoyed their own company. She’d often remarked at how hard it must be for those who don’t know how to be alone and didn’t like it when they were. We had liked being by ourselves just fine. But in the months and even years before that haircut, I’d discovered my edges were too sharp, my emotions raw and foreign, and my conversations not witty, smart, well-versed, compassionate, or thoughtful enough. I’d found myself wanting in too many ways.
I’d been fine when I was alone. It was in the interacting with others where I felt I failed time and time again.
And so, because of that, I’d had to learn to try and give myself the grace to be human. To be flawed. To be always course-correcting toward the true north of goodness. Whatever that means and however that’s done.
My dad used to say, “Err on the side of grace.”
For grace is kinder than perfection. Grace is given. Grace can be received. I still have to remember that. Over and over again. I still have to try for grace.
In between the gift exchanges and trips to the sweets-and-snacks laden table, my other cousin shares a grief with me. And I feel another tug of grief of my own. For I’ve been missing my dad a lot this holiday season.
He would have loved our recent tradition of lighting candles for the 12 Days of Christmas and of continuing to observe (as we had the year before he died) the solstice, with yet more candles and music from the Swedish St. Lucia celebration.
He would have loved to see my nephew, Thatcher, take shy pride in giving the gifts he’d picked out to me, my mom, and our friend Jan. He would have laughed at my five-year old niece’s squeals of joy at her gifts and smiled at her precious thank yous. He would have reveled in experimenting with Phinehas’s new VR game. He would have played dragons with his grandchildren along with their aunts, uncles, and cousins. He would have told stories to which my nephew Rene would have said, “I wish that had happened to me.” He would have sat with me to listen to the cassette tape recording of the French Christmas carols sung by someone named Father Moses which he had originally gotten from someone else (if not from Father Moses himself, whoever he was).
But around the grief, in the midst of the grief, around the joy, in the midst of the joy, he’s still there. Stronger than a single memory. Not as terrifying as an A Christmas Carol ghost, past, present, or future. He’s there in the flickering candle flame. In the jokes my brothers tell. In the threads of tradition my older sister and I still hold woven together. He’s still there ready to taste the pecan pie tarts my younger sister made. He’s there to look up and see my mom’s smile light up the room, the day, the world.
My cousins and the rest of our family leave. The house is quiet. The tree is bare of its groundcover of gifts. The candles have burned down to stubs. It’s another Christmas gone. As time always goes. My hair has grown out again. Longer and longer. My cousin’s hair will grow out too. My grief will get softer and sweeter. My other cousin’s grief will too.
And in the meantime, I’ll keep on trying to be someone I can like. Someone I can be, alone and with others, without constant judgement, regret, overthinking, or dismay. For I don’t yet know how exactly to be who I want to be at all times, in all situations, under any and every circumstance. But I can practice kindness. And when I fail at it, as I too often do, I can practice harder. I can adapt my approach and try again.
With the season of lights behind me and a new year beckoning me forward, I can be myself. And if I don’t like the result, I can sing myself a song. If I don’t like the result and I become sad because I look or act the same way I had before, then I can let myself grow. I can change.
Taking my dad’s advice, I can err on the side of grace even while doing my best to be gracious as I travel my way down the road of this thing we call life.
