Silver Linings
We are looping familiar ground, the houses predictable, almost dear. Across the way, an imposing home and its four outbuildings spreads along what used to be seven individual yards. The main house seems to peer curiously at our own small one. An anomaly, this mansion, penned in by a tall black fence that hugs a border of equally lanky pines, green giants that block any possibility of view. The other homes in our neighborhood— 60’s split levels, the occasional colonial—perch politely on their lots, unassuming. Yards mostly kempt.
While we walk, she is talking. Incessant questions, fired one after another in my direction.
Bink: Why your hair and the dolls’s hair is girlish not boyish at all?
Me: That’s the way I wear my hair, in what you call girl shape. And the dolls you have are made that way.
Bink: Why you have the girl shape and quiet dreamy girl noises?
Me: That’s my hairstyle. The dreamy girl noises are pieces of music my hair makes when it slides against my down jacket while I walk.
And then a question from me to her, rare during these walks: What if my hair was short and boyish? Would it be loud?
Rough, she says, short hair has sand in it.
–Melinda Coppola
I so love this, Melinda, and it brings to mind David Whyte. As part of his presentation, Solace, he talks about asking beautiful questions. I have listened over and over again and mull the whole notion of what beautiful question/s I might ask. Bink asks some beautiful questions, questions that have depth and are not instantly answered and not without consideration. I have to smile as the stylist I go to for hair cuts simply kept cutting and cutting as we chatted. Now I can tell that I have very sand filled hair!