Strands of time

Ever since I was a kid, I always got complemented on my hair.

My mother would brush the long strands as I knelt before her—her slender fingers knitting in between the silky length and stroking the smooth plain of it. As the wooden brush would glide through the satin-like, golden threads, she would whisper sweet nothings into the air, and occasionally would even tell a story or two.

My mother used to say my hair was like liquid gold—a gift from Mother Nature herself. It would gleam in the sunlight, reflecting rays of yellows and whites onto each gawking iris. It would flow like a river of light, sliding over my shoulders and face.

I rarely ever cut it.

Only the ends, occasionally. And so my hair was almost always down to my waist.

When I felt sad or lonely, I’d thread my fingers through the strands of gold and hear my mother’s words and sweet nothings over and over again.

Yet now, when I stood in front of my bathroom’s mirror—fingers twirling the soft ends—I didn’t feel that familiar warmth.

My life has been a puzzle—a mosaic of ever-changing scenery and faces. In hindsight, it was almost a blur—a foggy, lucid dream I wasn’t sure had actually happened.

Home was always temporary. I’d unpack boxes of books and toys and dresses only to pack them again. And again. And again. As the years went by, the carton boxes wore out. I’d unpack dolls and teddy bears, just to pack heavy textbook tomes and working tools—the former left behind. It became a cycle of constant change and adaptation. A constant cycle of gain and loss. Of meeting new people and leaving them behind. Of getting rid of dead weight—objects and priceless memories that only slowed us down in our pursuit. The pursuit of finding home.

Only my hair remained the same.

Long, luscious strands still brushed my waist in golden waves. The ends remembered my late-childhood and middle-school. The middle part held onto my adolescence. The roots—a kernel of a new stage, the start of adulthood.

My hair remembered those places. My every bedroom. Every view from my window. From open fields—plains of greens whites, to dense concrete jungles. Every molten sunrise and crimson sunset, every misty afternoon or rainy thunderstorm—my hair remembered it all.

I’ve been to six different schools and met countless people of all ages. Every name, feature, detail—all those memories were locked in shut into each gilded strand. Every warm-hearted greeting or mocking laugh. Every smile and every insult. All forever embroidered into the calm, blonde sea.

As I stood in my first apartment—boxes scattered throughout the floor—I willed my hair to remember. As I swam in those memories, the smell hit me first. It was a clean aroma of a brand new space. The apartment smelled of fresh paint and dust. An almost overwhelming aroma of plastics and fabrics and yet also emptiness. Dull, flat emptiness.

The sound came next.

Before, these were sounds of my parents quarreling over measurements and packing, thumps and swooshes of boxes being thrown onto the floor and slid along it. Now—now it was silent. And yet deafening at the same time. The silence was deafening.

I walked up to a window to open it and gaze outward. Before me sprawled two lively avenues separated by a quiet river. People dined at the restaurants alongside the river and sipped wine as the sun waved it’s last farewell. I willed my roots to gaze out the window and memorize every sliver of the avenue; every smile and laugh.

Wind seeped in through the window and ruffled my hair. Like strings of an instrument, the strands played out a memory:

“Where are you from?” said a curious voice as it examined my foreign features.

My tongue knotted as stupor hit me like a rock. Because after all the moving around—I lost that identity, lost that knowledge.

At my silence, the girl just marveled at my hair—at all those places and people I’ve met before.

I shook my head to disperse the memory. Instead, another washed over me:

Alone at recess, strangers walked and chatted around me. People gathered in groups which they had known for years. And where were my people? Where was my lifelong group?

My hair ruffled in the wind.

My people were non other but thoughts—glimpses of the past.

I tried to gather my hair to stop the flow of thoughts and memories, but it was to no avail.

“I want to go home,” said a whiny voice somewhere to my right.

Home.

Where was home? Home was in those who surrounded you—in your family, your friends, your favorite childhood dish…

And yet the only memory of those things were in the length of my hair. For my shoulder-length hair heard my carefree giggles; my middle-length hair had met all those long lost friends; my waist-length hair bathed in grief and nostalgia for a time I would not want to come back to.

And now, standing in the emptiness and the cold embrace of my own apartment, with as little as three carton boxes in the middle of the living room, I reminisced. And there was only one tangible object that held fragments of that other life I once had had—of those faraway fields and lively cities—of those other names and other faces. My golden hair.

To reminisce…

It came with a price—that glimpse into the past.

It came with a dull, familiar ache—a longing for those other times. Even when those other times were painful and bittersweet.

A type of grief that will never have end.

For I could never let go of those memories.

For they were woven into my soul.

I picked up some kitchen scissors to open some of the boxes. It was time to unpack and settle.

Settle.

The word curdled on my tongue.

But maybe it was time to let go of that past and focus on the future. Maybe it was time for a new chapter in my life.

Again.

And so I aimed for the boxes, but something tugged and pulled at my arm. An alien force pleading me, begging me to let go to let go to let go—

With one swift movement, the steel sliced through my sun-kissed hair—leaving it shoulder-length once again.

Leaving it anew.