Yippee, an all-new me

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. I’m so glad you are here. If you are interested in supporting my work, I invite you to click the heart at the bottom, share with a friend, or become a paid subscriber.

Without further ado, today’s pocket.

Kelly, my hair stylist, who is also a good friend of mine, sits me down in her salon chair and asks me if I made a New Year’s resolution. “I don’t mess around when it comes to New Year’s resolutions,” Kelly tells me, and I know she means it. She’s been cutting my hair for years, and in that time, she’s successfully given up sugar, alcohol and most recently marijuana. It is not unimpressive. I considered giving up alcohol and sugar for the month of January, and my resolve lasted less than twelve hours. I gave up the idea before I gave anything up.

Kelly makes getting sober from marijuana sound so life altering, though, I kind of want to give it up too. Trouble is, I’ve never smoked weed. Still, I’m on the edge of my seat as Kelly cuts my hair into the same short bob I’ve gotten for the last fifteen years, rapt as she describes how her most recent resolution is changing her life.

I’m always on the lookout for things that will change my life. We got a new vacuum a couple of weeks ago. It is mint green and looks like a small spaceship, and after setting it up and displaying it for my family to ooh and ah over, I looked at Dan and said, “This is going to change our lives.”

“I doubt that.” Dan said. “Also, I’m not sure I want a vacuum to change my life.”

I envy his sense of self. I’m more of a shape shifter. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It can lead to growth and change. Recently, I did two things that had a huge impact on my life. I read How to Keep House While Drowning, by kc davis, and for the first time in years, I’m not overwhelmed by chores I’m not doing. Our house looks good, and the best part is that the caretaking load is being shared. The second thing I did, with the prompting of a friend, was to go in for a bra fitting. My new bras are definitely changing my life right now, or at least I can get through the day without wanting to tear all my clothes off.

So, yes, seeking self-transformation has its perks, but it also has its downsides. For example, I did almost join a cult, and I may have also enthusiastically encouraged my school to consider allowing other teachers and students to join said cult with me. Fortunately, my boyfriend at the time had the same cynicism about the cult as he did about the vacuum, and with his support, I got out before I got in, but it goes without saying that my desire to transform runs deep.

I’m not exactly sure why this is. Maybe it’s the magic of Cinderella that grabbed hold of me as a child, or the story my grandmother told me about her father once finding money in a washed-up shoe. Whether this happened exactly as my grandmother remembered it, I can’t be sure. Stories tend to change and alter in their telling. If it did happen, it definitely wasn’t enough money to have made any significant impact on my great grandfather’s life, but that story instilled in me a belief that anything was possible, that a small event could change one’s entire life.

And, perhaps most influential of all, was the movie She’s Out of Control, which came out when I was around ten, and on the cusp of transformations I couldn’t yet quite imagine. Do you remember that movie? Rotten Tomatoes gave it like a 3.5 out of 10, so no worries if you don’t. It stars Tony Danza as a single dad. His teenage daughter is apparently supposed to be average looking, but she is played by Amy Dolenz who is about as average looking as Julia Roberts. She has braces and glasses, though so of course her magical female power is hidden until the day when she gets her braces off, and she gets contacts. Her final step towards shedding her old skin is when she swaps out her baggy jeans and sweatshirt for white knee highs and a short white skirt which about causes Tony Danza to have an all-out heart attack because all this time he thought his daughter was a caterpillar, but it turns out she’s a real butterfly.

There’s a scene in that movie where Amy Dolenz walks down the stairs in those knee highs, the wind blowing in her hair, which is a little confusing as she’s inside, but I didn’t care. I wanted to be her more than I wanted anything else. I wanted my own knee-high moment.

In high school, I sort of got it. I went to France over the summer to stay with Anne-Claire, a French exchange student, who had visited us in the States the year before. We got along great when she stayed with us. She was a little judgmental. She took pictures of our clutter to take home and show her family, which my mom didn’t love, and when I ate a giant soft serve ice cream cone with sprinkles, she asked me if I was worried about the fat content. I told her it was frozen yogurt, and she just laughed. I figured they didn’t have those things in France… frozen yogurt, clutter, fat. She spoke English well, and I introduced her to all my friends, and we had a blast together when she wasn’t judging my diet or my house.

The next summer when I went to visit her, it was different. I spent a lot of time alone. My French was not nearly as good as her English, so when we got together with her friends, I didn’t understand what they were talking about. I imagined it was music and boys, but I couldn’t follow the conversation. We weren’t really hanging out like I had hoped, and I didn’t know anyone else, so my current reality was kind of pathetic. I decided to deal with this the best way I knew how, by working on my future self. I exercised extensively and survived mostly off of shaved cucumbers, tomatoes and loneliness. Needless to say, I returned home a lot smaller, and when I went back to school in the fall, I finally got my knee-high moment because in America while nobody cares if you lose your braces or your glasses, they do care if you lose weight, and I had lost a lot of weight. The attention was kind of intoxicating, so intoxicating that it later led to an eating disorder, but more on that another day.

Kelly’s almost done with my hair, and I take a long look at myself in the mirror. “I love the cut,” I say, which is true. I do love it. I don’t care that it’s the same cut I’ve been getting for the last fifteen years. It looks great. “I didn’t really make a resolution this year,” I tell Kelly while I look at myself in the mirror and she applies some finishing touches to my hair. “I’ve been making a lot of soup though, and I finally sewed a button on my favorite coat. I’m also rereading my favorite book, The Name of the Wind,” I say to Kelly who nods her head. “Oh, and I went in for a bra fitting.” Kelly nods her head more emphatically when I say this last part. I think she gets it, but it’s okay if she doesn’t.

I’m just not as eager to shape shift as I used to be. Striving for who I want to be feels less important these days than supporting and caring for who I am. After spending so much of my life trying to change, not being desperate to escape who I am just might be my most radical resolution yet. I still have really high hopes for that vacuum though.