How I became a Teller of Tales

Mormon Ladies Get to Show Off Their Hair! Or What Inspired Me to Become a Teller of Tales
Do you know the roots of why you are who you are? What made you decide to become a scientist, a dentist, a doctor, or teacher? I think I might have discovered today what first made me want to become a writer.

I was on my way to the CVS Drugstore this morning for some hair dye and as I walked down a busy street in Queens, my mind went to the ongoing debate I have with myself. The debate came to my mind, because it was Saturday and I live in a community with a lot of Jewish people. The kind of Jewish people you can tell are Jewish just by by the way the dress, and temple, service, or whatever they call it, was getting out. I watched the women. I always do. We also have Hindu and Muslim people in our neighborhood. I observe the women of each culture/religion and how they dress. What is my on going debate? It's this. Would I rather be Muslim, Hindu or Jewish, based on clothing alone? Hindu--no debate. Why?

Simply because they get to show their hair.

Muslim women, have the head scarves.

The sect of religious Jews that we live around, all the adult women either wear wigs or scarves, scarves that are wound tightly around their head, not to be mistaken on confused with the more flowing head scarves of the Muslim women. But the majority of women in our area wear wigs. I read a book recently, THE ROMANCE READER about an Hasidic Jewish girl growing up in NYC in the 70's. On the morning after she was married her mother came to her house and shaved off all her hair and handed her a wig. I have seen hair sticking out of some of the Jewish women's head scarves. But I wonder if the ones who wear wigs are like the girl in the book and have shaved heads too?

That would for me, be the worst thing possible type of religious submission. Far worse than just hiding my hair behind some sort of head scarf. Why? I have always liked my hair. Okay. I love my hair.

Anne of Green Gables thought her nose was her one true beauty, but I knew growing up my one true beauty was my hair.

By the time I was eight my hair was down to my knees and had never been cut. My mother took great care of it. I had beautiful ringlets or long elegant braids. I got complimented, ooohed and ahhed at, and I think both my mother and I lapped up the attention. So I knew things had to be bad when she announced one day, a year or so after my triplet sisters were born, that she was going to cut all my hair off. I wasn't mad at her, it made sense. She had too much to do. But my heart was broken. My hair. My one true beauty, to be cut off?

By the time I was six, I was the eldest of 8 children. Four year old twins, two year old twins, and baby triplets. No wonder my mother had no time for my hair. But she made this drastic announcement s in front of my grandmother, her mother, who had moved next door after the triplets were born so she could help my mother. I wonder now if my mother too was trying to save my hair and this was her last desperate hope to save it. My grandmother was at our house every morning to help with the feedings, and baths and the little attention and care that could be spared for the rest of us.

"I'll take care of her hair," my grandmother said. We grandkids all called her Mom. I don't know why we did. But my grandmother was Mom and my grandfather was Pop, which led me to call my own mother Mother after I grew out of the Mommy stage.

I had always loved Mom, she would give us cookies when we'd go next door to visit, and always called me Honey Child, which made me feel special. And on the first day of school every year, when I would get so scared to go, that I would vomit, she would hold the vomit bowl and put her arms around me.

And then she became my savior--literally, because if I had to have my hair cut off like my four younger sisters who had pixie cuts, I would have lost my specialness.

I adored her then and still do for simply saving my hair. I was so grateful that morning. We weren't a hugging kind of family so I didn't rush over to her and wrap my arms around her, but inside I was jumping up and down when only a minute earlier after my mother's announcement, like Anne Shirley I had been in the depths of despair.

When you are the eldest of nine, and your dad works two jobs and your Mom is working almost 24/7 just trying to keep everyone fed and dressed, you like any positive attention you could get, and I got it for my hair.

So the oohs and ahhs continued. My one true beauty was still in tact and the wonderful hidden bonus I had no idea about that morning so long ago was that as Mom combed my hair every morning she would also tell me stories about her people. She was a professional genealogist, and she had the most wonderful stories to tell. My neck tingled as she talked and combed. I learned about James Crane, a poor bastard Welsh boy who had been my great great grandfather. I learned about Rebecca Kilgrow, my great grandmother, Mom's mom who was a real southern lady and grew up in Tennessee and who I was named for. Mom told me she never went outside without her gloves and hat to keep her lovely skin white. Is it no wonder I read GONE WITH THE WIND every summer from that time on? I wanted to know about that world my great grandmother Rebecca, had belonged to. Besides in full disclosure, it was one of the few novels we actually had in our house, tucked in-between Mormon Doctrine and The Book Of Mormon on our bookshelves.

Also, because I hadn't experienced a lot of touches and hugs, this little tingling running up and down my neck as her soothing voice told me stories, was the best feeling I'd ever had. And Saturdays were the greatest. That day she washed may hair in the kitchen sink and then she combed it out. We didn't have cream rinse and it hurt to have the tangles combed out, but I looked forward to that day the most, because it took so much longer. I got so much more time with Mom. And my neck still tingled as she talked even though my scalp was burning with pain from her hand combing out the snarls.

I loved Mom very much. She became a mentor for me in many things. When I went away to college I also began doing genealogy. I would later visit some of the places "our people" came from, like Wales and Tennessee. I remembered the stories she told me, found out more about our people and I've used some of their stories in my fiction.

So as I walked home today with hair dye in hand, the debate about which would be the least awful religion to be a part of, purely on the basis of hair was put aside. Instead I began to count my blessings, as I was taught to do from my Mormon youth. And I was grateful one, that I was raised Mormon, not Jewish, so I could keep my hair, and two I was grateful that Mom had saved my hair and was the first storyteller in my life.

And then I stopped on the sidewalk and pondered. I wondered for the first time, if it was Mom who had planted the seed inside my soul to actually become a writer, a teller of stories. Had she done far more than save my one true beauty? Had she not also planted the seed for who I was to become?