I had my first haircut since the hair places shut down. Actually my first since forever. Or like two years. My hair dressers husband just passed away. He was also a former coworker/slash friend of mine. I have been dreading going. I’m not the person to make small talk or any talk to others about loss and sadness. I have enough of my own. My lesson is too new of what not to say to others. Not to call them weak. Even if they are. So I bought her flowers and avoided any conversation other than talking about the flowers. I had to wear a mask. You can’t chat with your hair lady anymore. She kept getting pieces of hair caught in the ear pieces, making my mask fall off. I kept having to touch my face. She looked so frustrated I was afraid she might just quit right there. Leaving me with half a hair cut. She asked if we are doing any color. I said no. Just check me for ticks and a even out the angle that occurs naturally on my right side making my hair longer on one side. But I was thinking. Get me the hell out of here. I can’t breath, can’t talk and can’t be a regular customer today.
I was proud of my restraint in not coloring or perming my hair. I tend to do this. On a whim. It is usually like extraordinary color, not just some regular colors but blues and greens and pinks. I like extraordinary colors. But then I have buyers remorse of the worst kind. It’s permanent. I now have extraordinary hair color. She said. Your hair is naturally highlighted from the sun. People pay hundreds of dollars for this. She didn’t want to color hair today either. She is making me love my naturally hard workIng highlights I earned so we can end this moment. I say. I’m currently struggling with several employees if she knows any who wants to naturally highlight their hair. We laugh and talk about the flowers again and not about dead fathers. We talk casually about flowers and hair. Things we both can talk. I try to drink my coffee I brought while forgetting I can’t drink coffee I bought with a mask on. I leave.
I sat in my dads workshop again and cried. After the hair thing I wanted to cry. It’s starting to be a place I go cry. It was a good hard one. I couldn’t find a proper regular hammer. Just like the plain regular one with all the paint splattered on it. I am making my own tomato cages. They are too expensive to buy as many as I need that will be good. So I gather old 1×1 boards from work and plan to make little teepees. Like my dad did. It was painstaking to watch him do.
It was painstaking to watch me do. But I did. I could never find a hammer growing up. Just a regular one that hammers. My dad being a carpenter should have made this not a thing yet here I am in his workshop looking for a hammer and find just a bunch that do things similar to hammering but with various different heads to them. All laying out in places like they are about to be used to do extraordinary things. Not regular hammering things like nailing 1×1’s together to make tomato teepees.
It takes me to a place I just let it take me. I started to get mad he was in the middle of things. A bag of supplies to fix a lamp, a piano part broken that belongs to someone, a violin in the vice grip, stuff not put away. His work vest in a pile on the floor. Why didn’t he clean up before he died? I wanted to clean. He has hundreds of clamps in buckets on edges of shelves. I am convinced he just like having them. Like I like rocks he like clamps. I start looking at just all the things in there. It felt like going through a diary. So private. When I was little I used to open his little metal drawers and see what was in them. Just nails and screws but for some reason it felt like finding treasure.
I hang his vest and start putting a few things away. Let’s be honest he doesn’t need them out. I like things in places. He isn’t in there working like my imagination wants him to be. He was working then died and now my imagination says it’s time to help him clean up. I don’t want it clean. I just want to find a regular hammer. If he saw the hammer I used he would have stopped me. If he saw how I was holding it to hammer he would have been disappointed yet not surprised. I hammer like a girl. That’s not the right one or how you hammer. He would say. I would say. But it’s working. Then he would find the right one and just switch them. Putting the wrong one back away. Where did the right regular one come from?
As I’m tying these teepees up I get so frustrated I want to smash them. I can’t do anything without him here but now I have to. Does he know how angry I am right now? I stomp out of the garden and go in the shop and sit and basically pout. Like a child I’m pouting and crying. I don’t pout but I want to right now. I am angry. His stool settles. It’s broken still because he died and didn’t fix it either. He didn’t fix things before he left me. He didn’t tell me how to fix things before he left. He didn’t show me where the regular hammers are before he left. I didn’t listen to how to fix things before he left. Now I’m mad at me for not listening. I never do. Never did. Still can’t. I’m too loud myself to hear anything but myself, if that.
Out of the blue , Where are you Christmas comes on on my playlist. It’s my song. It’s the weirdest song to call my song. It can bring me to my knees in a second. It played one night in the hospital when my daughter was on life support after heart surgery. It played once in a shopping mall later on, it plays randomly, I force it to play. One year playing it over and over. Not at Christmas. I am about to play it again right now.
It’s the middle of June, I’m pissed off, sad, can’t find anything regular, and my dad died. I need him to not be dead, and then I laugh so hard I peed. It was the opposite effect this song had on me. It usually brings me to tears. The ridiculousness of it playing right that minute was so hilarious I couldn’t think. Just laugh. I got up and went to the corner of the garage. The place where all his tools hang when they are in the places they hang. I cry and laugh and contemplate sitting there until someone comes to find me. It’s my game.
I’m a master at hide in hide and seek. I hide so well no one can find me then get furious when no one does. I want to sit there and be found. My dad would have found me. But I don’t have time. Christmas is coming apparently. I start to just pull screw drivers up and out of the slots they are in. They are all different. None are a philips. None are regular. Just a bunch of unregular ones. I don’t need an extraordinary screw driver just a regular hammer. Then at the very end. In the corner. Hanging. Is a hammer. A regular one. Not just one but all 3 of his regular hammers. They hang because they are regular. I can never find them because they are so regular. It’s not the one laying out just used before he died. He wasn’t regular. The one I need is just regular. The ones he needs are extraordinary. Like he was. Is. I am just an extraordinary carpenters daughter not an extraordinary carpenter, looking for regular hammers so I can hammer tomato teepees.
Aspenleaf 