Chopped Off Strands

It was always just the two of us. No matter where we laid our heads, we were always within arm’s reach. I was too young to remember all the places we had slept, but I knew she was there.

Until the day she left.

We drove through our small hometown, and she parked the car on Main Street. She had told me it was Main Street once before. I remembered that by feeling our tiny car bounce like popcorn on the cobbled bricks. It was one block of shops and businesses that had the most traffic in our town—outside of a high school football game on an autumn Friday night.

I hopped onto the curb, my shoes lighting up the ground with multicolored flare. She took my hand and led me into a place I had never seen before. The outside looked like copies of the others down Main Street. The inside was an attack on senses I had barely discovered.

The walls dripped a pastel pink, a color I was always told to avoid, yet here we were. The air was hazy and smelled like a mix of sunscreen and my grandpa after he got home from the factory. It was so loud. I heard every lady who was talking without hearing a single word. I whipped my head back and forth to try and figure this place out when she guided me to a tattered maroon chair. She patted the seat and handed me a magazine. It was one I was told we couldn’t afford to get, but this place had it for the other kids who visited. I was beaming.

“Go ahead and read your magazine, and don’t leave this chair,” she said. I looked up at her and could tell she was serious about not leaving, but she still grinned, knowing I wouldn’t leave if my life depended on it.

The face that was always there was now walking away, but I knew she would be back. Plus, now I finally, finally got to look at this cool magazine.

Pictures on the pages came easily to me, the words not as much. I was still in excited awe that I even got to hold the magazine. I found the differences between two similar photos. I looked at different types of bears – some fuzzy, some scary. Completely engrossed, I had no idea of anything going on around me. I had only gotten halfway through all the pictures and puzzles in the magazine when I heard, “Great job, buddy. But now it’s time to leave.”

When I looked up, it was not her. This was a completely different person. I was always told not to talk to strangers, so I didn’t say anything. I remained glued to the old, padded chair.

“I know you want to keep reading the magazine, but it’s time to go home now,” the woman said, reaching for my arm. I did not know exactly where “home” was for her, and I did not want to find out.

I was too weak to fight back, so I threw all my weight in the direction of the chair as I tried to pull my arm from her grasp. “I don’t know you!” I exclaimed as tears streamed down my face. “Let me go!”

This woman was standing next to another woman I did not recognize, and they were laughing. Laughing. I was infuriated at them and continued to flail because nothing was funny. The person who loved me most in the world was still nowhere to be found. This new woman acted like she knew me and that we were somehow close enough to go somewhere together. I didn’t know her, so that was not any place I wanted to be.

“It’s me, honey,” she said through a different kind of tears. The balloon of snot inflated on the front of my nose indicated I was still uncertain about the whole situation. She took a breath while squatting down to my eye level. “You know Jingles is at home waiting for you, and we’ll stop and get some cookie dough ice cream on the way home.”

Okay, so she knew the name of my stuffed dog and my favorite flavor of ice cream. Big deal. Jingles was basically one of my best friends, and everyone knew cookie dough ice cream was the best. There was no chance it was her—unless maybe it was.

If it really was her, the long, brown hair I knew was gone. What went past her shoulders was now tightly nestled against the sides of her face. It didn’t feel real. But her eyes told a different story. They still gleamed at me to tell me everything would be ok, even when I was not so sure it would be. I had felt like this before, and it was this face that calmed me down.

When she recognized my guard was down, she gently pulled me off the chair, grabbed my face, and rubbed my cheeks with a soft wipe to clean the tears. It was so familiar and comfortable. I started to breathe a little again and looked at her smile. It was the same one that read me stories and told me to sleep well. I even found the dot that sat on the side of her cheek, which I always found funny to poke.

As we got into the familiar red sedan, I was convinced it was her and felt incredibly relieved. We were in our car together after I thought I had lost her forever. While she was different, and I did not exactly like it, I could still tell this was the person who tucked me into bed. I never wanted to lose her again.

While my shoes do not light up anymore, and I know what a salon looks like, I still don’t want to lose her. But life is inherently tricky, and it’s getting harder to avoid that loss.

She did a good enough job that I was a baby bird who flew the coop without a crash landing. Her drive to build a foundation for me to succeed had me learning and growing, naturally pushing me farther away from what home once was.

We live parallel lives that intersect for birthdays, holidays, or funerals, where we act like acquaintances waving at the grocery store. We smile, give gifts, and offer hollow laughs at jokes we know the other might not understand. Yet an unspoken rift remains, made more evident at a recent family gathering.

I stood around exchanging obligatory pleasantries but could hear her utter phrases like, “Those guys can do that, just don’t do it in front of me or put it on TV. It’s gross,” or “Those people are the real problem.” While our love for each other remains present, I hear these feelings, and I get both angry and sad at knowing our bond is loosening. Each time her simmering animosity reaches the surface, it is as if another strand of hair is being cut. So many pieces have been chopped off over the years, but they are not worth the fight once they hit the ground.

These moments made it harder to identify the person who cleaned the streaking saline off my face. Did I really leave the salon that fateful day with an entirely different person? Or was this seemingly new individual the same person who brought me there? One question was far scarier than the other.

I know those eyes still smile at me with pride when we’re together. The same dot is nestled on her cheek. It is hard to know if time changed us both or if it was a mask for a slow, dreadful reveal of what I always feared. I remain terrified of her being more than an arm’s reach away forever. But how can I lose her when she might already be gone?