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The Messy Middle

Kacie

My son is an early-riser. Most mornings, my first waking moments involve him slowly creeping into our dark room to whisper his most pressing thoughts into my ear, or to give me a soft peck on my cheek. 


I’m a better mother and wife when I can sleep until the sun is up. So I field his predawn enthusiasm through closed eyes, mumbles, and sideways hugs; then go back to bed.


In Uganda, at about age 5, he would leave my room to go outside in the early morning mist and tend to his sprawling garden. Our rabbits loved the fresh crunch of sweet potato leaves, which we had planted consecutive rows of, and he would snip bundles to throw to them as they hungrily waited. 


Often I would be presented in the kitchen with the morning bounty; handfuls of cucumbers, a clump of proudly pulled soil-ridden carrots, or one tiny long-awaited yellow crookneck squash. 


We haven’t entirely found our rhythm now that we’ve moved back to California and are living in a big city. 


But we did adopt a small dog to help fill the Uganda sized hole in our hearts.

One of the first questions I asked the dog’s foster parent was “what time does Gracie wake up in the morning?”, knowing full-well that a daily 5 am around the block potty break was a deal breaker for me. 


“Oh, whenever I get up, usually by 8:30, 9:00 sometimes.”


That, mixed with the fact that she was a documented great traveler, and her unsightly underbite that had my kids roiling in laughter, had us all hooked.


Now, when my son gets up, little Gracie is there, ready to be his enthusiastic companion for that first solo-hour. 


But last week, my son had a request that the dog couldn’t fulfill. I was deep in slumber when a little puff of hot breath said, “Can you give me a haircut?”


“Huh?” I mumbled, put off by the amount of thought and effort the question required. I peered out our curtain, pitch black.


“I don’t like how long my hair is,” he said. 


“Not now buddy, it’s way too early.”


“But this morning?”


Even without opening my eyes, I could envision the back of his neck where his hair was starting to grow in a thick, long, clump. The depths to which a parent studies and memorizes their child. “Sure, later,” I said.


“ThanksMom,” he ran off.


By 7:45 am that morning, he had our house gathered together, on a mission. My husband was out for an early morning meeting. The girls were dressed, ready for the day. The dog was squirming like a piece of larvae on a leash. 


I googled the closest open Barber Shop after convincing my son that I did not have the prowess to take his shaggy long hair and give him the "high fade" he was begging for. He’s been getting haircuts from me his entire life, but I know my limits.


My oldest daughter (10), dressed but still sleepy and confused, looked at me as we marched out the door. “Why are we doing this again?”


Her little brother interjected, “Because Noah said, ‘Bro- you need to cut your hair!’”


“Noah from Jiu jitsu?” my other daughter (8) asked. “The one that said your breath smelled like pepperoni when you pinned him?”


“That was Liam.”


I briefly note the motivating power of a random 7-year olds words on our life. 


“I thought you wanted long hair?” the sassier sister inquired.


“Nah, not anymore. I want it to look like Liams. All the boys in class have short hair,” he says confidently as we begin to walk the 2 short blocks. 


We homeschool within a co-op of about 20 other students, with weekly playdates and nature school, but our local Jiu jitsu studio is our most consistent, social touchpoint. 


As Gracie sniffs her way from bush to bush, I think about how different our lives look and feel now. How transitioning realities is discombobulating. How your life (and your children’s lives) get thrown into the air and often feel like the pieces have not yet all landed. What should we be doing at 7:45 am on a Monday morning? 


“In Uganda”, (the repeated crossover phrase for a crossover time), my kids would be getting ready to go to their school, and I would be getting ready to go to work at the hospital. 

So much of our family’s muscle memory exists in a hidden alternate reality, the dissonance of ‘what used to be’ touching up against ‘what’s now’. 


We walk past a house and peer through the chain link fence to a large flat concrete head of a hippopotamus placed on the dirt, a piece of yard art that creates an illusion that the rest of the body is submerged just below the ground.


My kids stand still and we stare at it for a moment, almost expecting it to move, like every other hippo we have seen in the last five years. 


“Weirdly realistic,” I say.


“Eh,” one shrugs her shoulders.


“Kind of,” another says.


I wonder what they’re thinking. If this fake hippo head has made their gut turn inside out right now with pangs of missing Africa too.


I don’t have to block out the traffic or the littered diet coke cups to be standing under our orange flamboyant tree, toes in the wet grass, looking at the silhouette of the clouded Rwenzori Mountain range stretched out before me.


We continue walking.  


The Barber Shop is on the corner of a busy street. Amidst a few small businesses, there is a man with a pushcart who sells churros, a self-car wash, and a Mexican grocery store. Our neighborhood is primarily Latino, which has helped us feel at home, orbiting the periphery of another culture again.


My sweet child will soon have all his boyish locks chopped, and something about my children’s bodies changing; haircuts, losing baby teeth, or the spray of new nose freckles; intensifies the awareness that life will always change. What you had before, in the state it existed, whether you loved it or hated it, is bound to evolve. 


But today my brain is foggy, the evolving feels more like devolving. 


Something about this early morning haircut, the 2 block walk, this modest Barber Shop have ushered me into an unexpected headspace. Call it grief or transitional stress, or just the deep desire in my soul for my entire family to feel content and completely at home somewhere, instead of kind of at home everywhere. 


As my children file ahead of me through the swinging glass door, the only word I reflectively think to say to the men inside is Olayo, which means good morning, in Lubwisi. 





For four and a half years, I have been repeating that phrase to people up and down the road as they saunter to their gardens to hoe, or plant, or weed. 


But what would these men know, or frankly- care- of that life? Of the world within a word that I manage to swallow instead of say? 


A tall slender man with long grey hair slicked into a low ponytail has his hands braced on the back of a black leather swivel chair. 


I stop at the threshold before entering and point at our dog, “mi perro?” I say, keeping Gracie outside.


No, no, no- es no problem!” he assures me, waving us both in. 


Gracias, Thank you,” I respond, unsure about which language to use.


Even this early in the morning, there are three adult barbers, from different generations. 


This man is the oldest. 


The next is a round, short guy with a warm smile and a lazy eye. 


And the third? A hip younger stylist who has a curly bleached faux hawk, thin goatee, and a few piercings. The young one calls my son over to his chair with a pat.


I pull the picture up on my phone. “He'd like it to be like this, shaved on the sides, a little longer on the top.”


The barber looks at me and then quickly at his buddies for an explanation.


I try switching over to Spanish but realize I’ve never learned the word for longer, and I can’t stop thinking in Lubwisi- I verbally stumble around until everyone in the shop thinks they understand what I am saying. Then I leave my poor communication and the fate of my child’s hair in the hands of the cool-looking dude. 


Everything about the charades of this moment is familiar. 


When I sit down, the tall older man asks me a few questions in Spanish. I’m able to hold a basic conversation, and supplement enthusiasm and hand gestures for the missing parts. 

My son looks like someone’s tortured baby doll now, with his hair sprouting off in all directions in clips. 


This is going to be awhile.


The chatty older barber wants to know all about us; where we live, what school my kids go to, if we’ve ever been to his shop before. I risk it all and tell him we’ve been living in East Africa. I know this conversation means I will now butcher my tenses, and stutter through new things I’ve never had to say before. 


But I’m all in.


He mentions that he has one other white customer who also lived in East Africa. 

I say, “Pienso que es mi esposo?!”  


I pull out my phone again, and show him a picture of my husband and our family, when we were picnicking on the top of our car during a safari at our favorite place; Lake Mburo. It was our first time seeing a large family of giraffes up close, munching acacia leaves. 


“Si! Si!” he replies, excitedly. That’s him. 


We’re now about 10 minutes into our conversation, when he does something surprising.

He switches over into English.


“You know,” he says “I lived in Angola for 7 years!”


“You did?” I had made an assumption that he knew nothing about Africa. That in the Venn diagram of my day, he was on the left, Africa on the right, and there was me and my family swimming in the messy middle. 


“I’m from Panama, but before I moved here I was a fisherman in Angola. You know Angola?”

“Ya, but I’ve never been there,” I leaned over, elbowed my girls and said “girls- he’s lived in Africa too!” 


My head began to clear and I felt less estranged.


“Angola is by the water,” he said. “The fishing was good- but it was hard times. Maaaany Cubans bringing guns to the rebels in Congo. Black market. Those rebels, it was bad. The fishing was good, but the rebels was bad. 1970’s…,” he said, shaking his head.


My daughter (8) mumbles under her breath, “I hate rebels”.


“There were Congolese rebels in our region too,” I say, knowing I share a mutual understanding of what this man means when he says it was bad. Working with IDP’s and refugees was one of my favorite parts of my job.


I am sitting straighter, and lighter.


“This is my Shop, been here 17 years,” he said proudly. 


Life continues on, people move, resettle, build their lives into something beautiful again; from Panama, to Angola, to the US. From fishing to cutting hair. We morph and grow. That is life.


An old woman slowly walks her elderly husband by the arm, over to my conversation partner’s open chair. The man gingerly sits down. The woman sits next to me and smiles. When she speaks Spanish to her husband in her soft voice, my dog's ears perk up.

 

In what seems to be out of character, Gracie pulls to be close to this woman, and positions herself comfortably just between her shins. The woman chuckles and Gracie looks up at her with doe eyes, content. 


“C’mere Gracie,” I pulled at her leash.


“Es ok. I love… I…” and the woman never finishes what she was going to say, like second nature she just strokes our dog and giggles. Where did this new rescue dog of ours live the last 3 years of her life? 


Like magnets, there’s a force bringing these two together. Is it the same ingredients of loss and longing? 


“You know,” the other barber, the round one, the only one without a customer yet, said to me. “Earlier this year, I went to Uganda.”


“THAT’S WHERE WE LIVED!” I practically shout.


“Really? Agh, it was amaaaazing. That place is amaaaazing.” He started to talk about the people, the dancing, the joy he witnessed and experienced. The project his church went over to complete in 2 weeks. 


I appreciated this simple, uncomplicated version of Uganda. Like hearing about marriage from a couple just back from their honeymoon. Everything he was saying was true, but he was relaying an experience with less heartache and betrayal than my family and our entire missionary team experienced and I envied him for that. 


He also captured something my soul needed to hear that morning: Shared delight in what I was aching for.


He then walked over and handed me his phone. “Watch this, my friend made it.”


It was 13 minutes long, although I only lasted 4 until my eyes were so clouded over with tears that I couldn’t see. I sniffled and wiped, fully engrossed in a short movie showcasing Uganda, both people and place, in her glory. 


Sunsets.

 

Fruit stands. 


Chickens running aimlessly in the orange glow of the late afternoon.


Thick crops of green banana trees, waving in the equatorial breeze. 


Women gathered, cradling babes, laughing together. 


Kids, high-cheek boned and scrappy, playing soccer.


Even the image of a traffic jam in Kampala had me. 


I kept the video playing, but couldn’t watch anymore, twisted up by the unrelenting beauty. Wondering, will our family ever have a life there again?


“We went to this place… called Lake Mburo...” the barber said.


I laughed. “I love that place!” If he only knew! I could talk for hours!


Then he went on to tell a hilarious story about his time there.


Immediately I had a bird’s eye view of it all. The walk, the barbers, our conversations, this video.


I segue from listening and pray silently to God, I know you’re with us, thank you for this.

Then I look over to see my son beaming, with soft brown mounds of years worth of hair on the ground all around him. Exposed are his perky ears, the bold curvature of the back of his head, his slender strong neck stretched higher than ever.


I can only see these things because of what was taken away.


This morning was a spiritual play date, amidst the strangeness, (as I could never have woven together this obscure set of circumstances) there bore gifts; of community, joy, acknowledging and processing loss, and the beauty in being seen. 


All in response to a haircut.


You never know where God will show up!


                             


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