Did I call that or what?
Jul. 26th, 2012 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistMy mom greeted me at the airport with "Oh Holly you know I don't like that!" and the kind of one-armed shoulder-squeeze that might be construed as a hug but which I knew meant she wanted to throttle me.
Fifteen hours after I'd left my house in Manchester, sleep-deprived, in huge amounts of pain from my sinus infection, having repeatedly believed I wasn't going to make it, wrung out by the anxiety and the total breakdown that I'm sure made me That Crazy Woman for the gate staff at Schipol's E19, I couldn't even figure out what it was she didn't like; I looked down at my clothes -- an old, faded dress, stained with something from my airplane dinner -- in confusion until I remembered: it was my hair.
All week I've been telling people the story of how I came back for my grandma's funeral when I was in college, in the middle of finals; a friend had a shouting match with one of her professors to rearrange hers so she could drive me. We got here in the middle of the night, a four-hour drive on slow, boring roads. And my mom greeted me with a wordless scream, because I dared to have bright red spiky hair. (When all my grandma's old-lady friends told me the next day how my grandma would have loved it, and other such approving "oh you crazy kids" type stuff, I could feel my mom seething besides me, the only one who thought it was such a bad thing.)
I tried telling her it could've been a lot worse -- I washed it until the green faded out, it's just bleached now. I also briefly thought about telling her "hey, at least I shaved my legs!" but wasn't quite tired and miserable enough for that to seem like a good idea.
Fifteen hours after I'd left my house in Manchester, sleep-deprived, in huge amounts of pain from my sinus infection, having repeatedly believed I wasn't going to make it, wrung out by the anxiety and the total breakdown that I'm sure made me That Crazy Woman for the gate staff at Schipol's E19, I couldn't even figure out what it was she didn't like; I looked down at my clothes -- an old, faded dress, stained with something from my airplane dinner -- in confusion until I remembered: it was my hair.
All week I've been telling people the story of how I came back for my grandma's funeral when I was in college, in the middle of finals; a friend had a shouting match with one of her professors to rearrange hers so she could drive me. We got here in the middle of the night, a four-hour drive on slow, boring roads. And my mom greeted me with a wordless scream, because I dared to have bright red spiky hair. (When all my grandma's old-lady friends told me the next day how my grandma would have loved it, and other such approving "oh you crazy kids" type stuff, I could feel my mom seething besides me, the only one who thought it was such a bad thing.)
I tried telling her it could've been a lot worse -- I washed it until the green faded out, it's just bleached now. I also briefly thought about telling her "hey, at least I shaved my legs!" but wasn't quite tired and miserable enough for that to seem like a good idea.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-26 06:08 pm (UTC):( :( I'm not a big fan of the oddly colored hair either but, you know what? This is NOT about her!
Especially given that you flew out of the country on such short notice, and it's been a madhouse. :(
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-27 10:29 pm (UTC)