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And that's right there on the website as well at OurAmericanStories.com. Today we have Winter Persapio, an author from Texas, bringing us a story from a moment of motherhood. She writes essays about motherhood and is currently a humor columnist for her local daily. Here is her story entitled, Curls. It takes a full 20 minutes to comb through her curls. I sedate the riot of hair with handfuls of slick conditioner and sit just outside the tub on her yellow footstool.
Comb me through the long black strands that spring back into ringlets after every pull. I never imagined I'd have patience for this before I had children. When I think back to my life before my daughters arrived, I can't remember doing anything quite so methodical as mothering. Nothing has ever been as demanding of skills I didn't possess.
I've never faced so many moments when I was at the end of my rope where I was driven to shouting at another human being, at my own child, only to apologize later much too late, much too little. The comb catches in the thick nest of twists and turns and I pull her hair slightly. She rarely protests when this happens. Genetics must tie the curly hair gene with the tough scalp one.
This genetic combination did not include the gene that extends graciousness with curious strangers, however. Her naturally curly hair draws compliments everywhere she goes. Strangers come up to her with hands extended, trying to touch the spirals, framing her tiny face and black eyes. Only a few get away with it. Most times she warns them off with a staunch, no touch, her arms crisscrossing her head in a protective shield.
Still, strangers reach for the curls in restaurants, on sidewalks, in doctors' offices. I'm lucky. I can touch them every day.
We sit in the quiet bathroom. She's focused on her floating toys, I on untangling, smoothing. I've become such a different person since I had children. I've become quieter, more careful, more aware of small moments. I'm acutely aware of the chasm between my friends who don't have children and my friends who do. I've leaped the canyon, never sensing the moment my feet were in the air, only a few closest friends jumping with us as honorary aunts and uncles. Now I understand why I never saw people once they had their children, why they stopped calling, how they disappeared into thin air. I recognize the way the strange wild space grew between us with every step their children took, toward solids, toward school, toward adolescence, toward leaving, toward never really being gone.
Across the vast chasm, I see my childless friends moving on quickly as I sit here, still sit here, time turning in on itself so I can see both ends of it, beginnings and endings, all wrapping around my fingers. I risk a higher starting point on her head, thinking I've worked out most of the knots, but it's no good. I'm back to the thick tangle, prying the teeth of the comb with it. She turns, looking for something.
The cloth has slipped back in the tub. I hand it to her wordlessly. She takes it without a glance and returns to her cups that need filling. My father, a veteran of many wives, always said he would never marry a woman who hadn't had children. They are too selfish, he said. And I wondered, as a single woman in those days, how selfish I was.
When he married a woman with three young daughters, my stepsisters, I wondered if he would be able to share her with them. I lean back for a moment, feeling the dull burn in my back, and clean the comb out. The fine black hair, slick with the conditioner but still twisting, coats my fingers as I brush them off onto a paper towel. Stretched out, a single curl is long enough to reach her waist, yet it will bounce back to her shoulder when it's dry.
I've never had her hair cut, nervous that the metal will somehow break the bonds of this miracle flowing from her crown. Before they were born, I never really noticed children before. Now when I meet them, as I'm out on my own, in an office when someone brings her son, in a store when four-year-olds bounce into my path, I stop purposely. I kneel before them, look into their eyes and say hello. They smile, usually, recognizing some universal quality I've gained.
Or maybe I just look silly, crouching like a frog. All the tangles are out, and I take great pleasure in running the comb through her hair again and again, separating strands into perfect spirals. She looks up at me. All done? No.
Never. Yes, baby. All done. And great job on that piece by Faith. As always, she did great work here.
And a special thanks also to Winter Presapio. And she's an author from Texas. And my goodness, just what sweet, sweet and precious and detailed storytelling. And that is the thing about motherhood and fatherhood. It is real details you start to pay attention to. And patience, well, that's the skill none of us really have. And the skill that gets tested most, I think, talking to all the folks I've talked to in my life about parenthood. Patience is something you just got to develop. I was acutely aware of the chasm between friends who had children and friends who didn't.
And it's true. It's just so different how you have to reorient your life around these people of yours, these little ones of yours. Nothing has ever been as demanding of skills I didn't possess. People always ask me, I'm just not, am I ready yet? And I always tell young people, you're never ready. You're just never ready. I didn't have a child until I was almost 40.
And I wasn't ready until I was. The story of Winter Persapio's daughter-mother bond. And, well, fathers and sons and fathers and daughters know these bonds too. Here on Our American Story. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the show where America is the star in the American people.
And we do it all from the heart of the south, Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't do this show without you. Our shows will always be free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to OurAmericanStories.com. Give a little, give a lot. That's OurAmericanStories.com. Go, go!
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