A few grains

A younger man approved my then long hair, telling me he wished women wouldn’t cut their hair the minute they reached a certain age. 

Approving his approval, I kept it long awhile, perishing the thought of looking middle-aged.  I decided to cut and run from the vanities one fine August day among the gnarled stumps of an abandoned cherry orchard.  Thrusting shears into the hands of nymphs who cut their own and each others’ hair at the merest provocation, I was reborn.

Since then I’ve shorn my coif ever shorter, sometimes feeling more artsy than elderly, other times not so much. The crone goddess stalked me still, until a couple of nights ago when my dear old mother visited me in her June Cleaver garb, a dream I told my sister...

'I dreamed I was sitting at the dining room table with you and Dad and Mariah and Mom. We were smiling and talking, Mom had flesh on her bones and her hair was brown. Mariah was young, in blond pigtails. I went over to Mom's end of the table, gave her a big hug, told her I missed her and we all missed her and loved her and I'd thought she'd died, but here she was with us. She just kept smiling her beautiful smile. She was wearing a beige cardigan and plaid Scottish skirt, maybe pearls. Hugging her sideways as I looked across the table at you guys, I felt Mom smooching my cheek continuously, like a happy child. I said to you sisters, 'this isn't real is it?' and Mariah, grinning back, said, 'nothing's real, Susie!' We all seemed to think that made sense. I woke up, thinking of love.'

 If nothing is real, then everything might just as well be real.  My sister’s take on the dream gives an artist pause.  She said:

'I'm listening to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He talks about reality - how we can't really take it in - we take a few grains of sand of it and that's our reality. There's so much - so much.'

I guess that’s what art does.  Excavate, death defy, populate the world with seers.  There are muses, in pearls, waiting to smooch us unabashed into the light.

Painting by Paul Gauguin, La Baignade