you can rip the whimsy from my cold, dead claws

This morning, I walked barefooted out the back door, turned on the hose, squinted against the sun, walked gingerly through the grass so as to avoid the spiky thistle leaves (which seem to triple in size over the course of one North Texas night), and started to water our garden.

The short layers of my pixie cut were sticking up all askew after a pretty typical night of sleep and non-sleep.

As I finished in the backyard, I started to make my way to the front, but caught a reflection of myself in one of the windows. I laughed at the sight of my hair, and remembered a time when I wouldn’t step onto the front walk of my apartment without my makeup done.

I looked down at my old shorts, the t-shirt of Ryan’s that I slept in because it’s softer than any of mine, and the legs that I really don’t remember when I last shaved. I chuckled to myself again. How things had changed.

My hair really was frightful though.

I felt the pitter patter of the tiny feet of those old ideas, running excitedly toward an opening in my consciousness. Little goblin laughs. Thrilled by the prospect of feasting on old insecurities. The wine flowing, the music swelling, shouting their chorus over the beat of their dance:

Your backyard is fenced in, so whatever, but don’t you dare walk into the front yard looking like that!

I considered for a moment going back in to fix my hair, or at least to get a hat.

Your neighbors might be outside! People might be driving by! For God’s sake, they can’t think you’ve let yourself go!

Me, in the garden this morning (source)

Feeling inspired by the revelry of the little thought goblins but annoyed at the subject of their glee, I lifted the garden hose a little higher.

And stuck my head under it.

The cold water shocked my scalp and inspired a sharp gasp of breath. Little drops rolled behind my ears as I stood back up to rustle my hair into place, wetting one shoulder of my shirt in the process.

I felt restored by that cold water, feeling much more unencumbered by social convention than I had mere moments before. My body remembered from childhood the feel—the smell, the taste—of cold water from the hose hitting sun-warmed skin, and it felt like freedom.

You may be wondering if I’m having a manic pixie dream girl moment, but I assure you this is not that.

This is not “I do my hair with the garden hose each morning; I’m so silly, hehe!”

This is a story of a moment in which my brain was itching to do the conventional thing, but my body chose whimsy.

Last summer, I was talking to a friend who was thinking a lot about bunnies. Her daughter couldn’t stop talking about bunnies, so they were considering getting one as a pet. She sent a picture a few days later. Her amazing, exuberant daughter posing…with not one but two bunnies. I laughed. She responded, “the whimsy got me!”

Michalina Janoszanka, Wiosna (Spring), ca. 1920s

I’m constantly thinking and talking about how atrocious this world is. The ways that greed and subjugation carve out the heart of what life could be. The way that wealth and power makes people—presidents and legislators and billionaires, yes, but also ordinary people like you and me—hungry, hungry, hungry, caring so little for the devastation they leave in the wake of their bank drafts.

I am not hopeful most of the time.

But my body is always choosing whimsy.

I’ve learned that the whimsy does not take away the sorrow. I’ve learned that the whimsy does not soften the blow of the atrocities. Truly, it’s not meant to.

I do not seek to distract myself from the horrors of life by dancing around in the rain, pretending life is a movie with a neat and tidy story arc. I do not dress in bright colors and patterns just to bide my time until the good guys win in the end.

I do, however, seek to stop for a long and winding conversation with my friend who used to sleep on the steps of our church, petting his precious dog with dirt still under my fingernails from picking wildflowers on the way there.

I will lament and grieve on a global scale; I will grow and work on a local scale. I will claw my way through the shit that poverty and oppression throw at my family, my friends, and my community.

But I will not—not ever—give up the whimsy.

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