I just wanted a trim, really

Next Tuesday, I will get on a plane and head for the Other Washington, where I'll be attending a conference. It promises to be lively -- hundreds of writers talking about what they do, how they do it, and why. So I'm excited. Mostly. After all, it's also intimidating to wander among the well-published or -- gulp -- their agents.

I'm in prep mode, trying to get all my ducks in order before I leave. Bills paid? Check. Clothes washed? Almost check. Toiletries packed? Check, and check. How about a haircut? Check ... please.

I present, for your amusement, a conversation (sort of) that transpired when I went for a trim this week. Let's just say that the small talk the stylist tried to engage me in was not what I'd expected.

Scene: a local bargain-basement hair salon (conveniently advertising half-price cuts). The service in the past has been hit-or-miss because of the rotating staff. But the long layers our protagonist usually requests are a fairly straightforward job, and even a few misplaced snips disappear within two weeks as her hair grows out. For $7.99, it's still a deal.

Hairdresser: [Draping her client in a smock] "What would you like today?"

C. Troubadour: "Just a clean-up on the ends, please."

H: "No problem."

She begins combing and snipping. CT watches in the mirror but stays quiet so as not to disturb the woman's concentration.

H: [As she runs her fingers through a section on one side] "Love that Asian hair. So thick and strong. When I was younger and wore extensions, that's what I would get."

CT: "Oh?" [Looks up at the woman's longish chestnut-colored pixie cut.]

H: "Yep, I loved it because you could bleach it but the pigment in it was so strong that it would turn orange -- I liked that look."

Unsure what else to say, CT nods.

H: "I still dye my hair now -- do it myself." [Smiles proudly.] "But it's to hide all the gray."

CT: [Relieved to find something to respond to, swiping at trimmings gathering on her face] "I've got some of that coming in at the crown."

H: "You do!" [Continues snipping.] "Mine's at the temples. I always thought that looked so good on a man. But on me? It sticks out all over the place like little wires. As if I needed pubic hair coming out of my head."

CT pauses mid-swipe.

H: [Gesturing with her scissors at random points around her head] "I mean, it's like sproing! sproing! sproing! sproing! sproing! -- "

CT's eyes widen.

H: "So that's why I dye it. You know, I wonder why armpit hair doesn't turn gray. I mean, don't you?"

CT is speechless.

H: "I wonder too sometimes if my eyebrows are graying as well. It looked like they were getting lighter, but I couldn't tell for sure since I started coloring them to match. What a nuisance, eh?"

A pause. CT flounders for something, anything to say --

CT: "Well ... at least you know what you're doing?"

End scene.

In between

Chapter 4 of the Thesis That Would Not End is off to my advisor as of last night. Which makes 40 pages of semi-polished work (as opposed to the 40 pages of not at all polished work I had at this point a year ago). I need 35 more by the second week of March for that fun little deadline known as First Deposit. Essentially, the work has to be "complete and in final form" for the graduate college to review before I can schedule a defense.

It was so much nicer when I thought I didn't have to have all this put together until mid-April.

I'm catching a breath and squeezing in some housework before plunging back into Chapter 5, which is easier said than done. Between D's brother and sister-in-law visiting for the last week (they left yesterday) and some other stuff (yes, I'm being vague because it is way too complicated to go into on a breath-break), my concentration hasn't been at its best. But I have this amazing tool drowning out the indignant howls of the kitty, who is wondering why the heck I've been holed up in the bedroom, where she's not allowed. I can't write with her begging to hop into my lap (or while she's in it), as much as I have tried. So the low hiss coming from my speakers -- rather D's; I'm still waiting on new adapter parts after the hissy fit my old power cord threw -- is kind of helping me focus ...

Emptying the dishwasher and cleaning all the sinks and mirrors in the house should not be all I count toward my measure of productivity today, but everything else feels so much less concrete.

2011

... is off to quite a start.

For the moment, I'm going to ignore the fact that I'm writing this on a borrowed laptop -- mine suffered a catastrophic loss of power yesterday that will only be remedied with a new adapter -- and focus only on the previous week. It was a decent one.

Given the mess that was 2010, I consider that fantastic news.

I had my concerns as the last moments of the year approached. Please, I said to myself, snuggled into a booth at a wine bar, where my family had opted for a late dinner after the concert we'd attended at Lincoln Center. Please let 2011 be better. Really, it wouldn't take much, all things considered.

I don't have a faith I can fall back on, having grown up with a mix of Buddhism, Catholicism, and atheism coloring various years in my spiritual development (none of the aforementioned schools of belief actually stuck). But the wish I couldn't give voice to, as the final seconds of December fell away, might very well have been a form of prayer. To whom, I don't know. Of late, especially as I've written more and more about family history for my thesis and studied the beliefs that shaped it over a generation or two, I've felt the ghostly presence of my ancestors in the aftermath of their influence. Whether they handed them down whole or in parts, their values -- cultural, philosophical -- had their role in making my parents who they are. So as I've attempted to bring my parents to life on the page, I've found myself consulting, in some ways, with the dead, trying to understand and illustrate my parents' ways of being as they stem from their families of origin.

My grandparents believed that their ancestors watched over them and, in some ways, protected them. In the absence of any other spiritual influences in more recent months, I'd say my own meditations on my ancestors have brought them -- or at least the idea of them -- close enough for me to feel their metaphoric gaze.

So perhaps, my wish for a year better than the preceding one was meant for them to hear. Certainly no one else would have been able to as the New Year neared -- everyone, including my family, was playing a horn or other noisemaker handed out by the maitre d', laughing, cheering, raising flutes of champagne. A perfect chaos of anticipation.

I felt some kind of weight lift as the chef and his staff appeared at last, parading down the main aisle of the restaurant while banging pots and pans to signal the official arrival of January. And that lightness has stayed with me, despite travel exhaustion (mostly jet lag), the unceremonious return to post-vacation life (mostly bills and errands and household chores), and lingering uncertainties about how this year will go.

It's a good sign.

Here's hoping the fact that my adapter fried itself at 4:44 (an extremely unlucky number in Chinese superstition because the word for four is homonymous with the word for death) means absolutely NOTHING.