Spiritual Autobiography

When I teach essay writing, one of the assignments is for a spiritual autobiography.  I don't mean it, in the context of a college classroom, as spiritual in the sense that we mean it as JW's.  The point for the students is to locate themselves within a larger context, to answer the question who they are on this planet.  If they need to compare themselves to others, no problem.  If they want to locate themselves as Jews in a Christian world or Asians in a Caucasian world (which is funny, because there are more Asians than any other ethnicity, but not in Johnstown.  In Johnstown all my students seem to think the world revolves around white Catholics.  When I tell them Kennedy was the first Catholic president of the U.S. they hardly believe me) that is fine too.

So, there are many ways to locate the self within a larger context.  I locate myself as a mom, as a JW, as a professor, a redhead, a Barbie doll lover, oh, we could go on all night.  A music lover, movie buff, budding chef.

Today, I relocated myself in another context.  My hair is red by birth, a nice auburn.  I know women are never supposed to be happy with their looks, and I'm not, but I like my hair.  Funny how we lose pigment in our hair but not our eyes.  Thank Jehovah my green eyes are not turning gray too.

I've been using henna from JustforRedheads.com for about ten years.  It really covered the gray naturally.  I am used to people telling me I have great color especially for my age.

But of late, the gray is coming in so fast that the auburn henna is hard put to keep up.  So I ordered "champagne" henna this time.  I was very happy with the result - a Nicole Kidman strawberry blondish color.  But the rest of my hair remained red from the years of henna.  So today my hairdresser, Jessica, stripped the red out.  Took a while - 20, 30, then 40 strength bleach, then color, all this waiting around while stuff develops up there.

I am so glad I'm not a cosmetologist.  I could not do that everyday for a job.  I barely got through today, and the back of my neck is tired from laying in the washing sink so many times.

Anyhow, my hair was green at one point.  It's fine now, and I'm really liking it, especially the idea of not being chained to the henna bottle to hide the gray in that high contrast red hair.  But it's still very very strawberry blonde.  No auburn about it.

And that is not how I have ever located myself in the world.  It has taken me all day to think about this, and I'm probably not done.  I like it, but who is it?

It's an older me.  Jehovah did not mean for us to get old.  Right now I could kick Eve's sorry rear end if she was around somewhere.  But I guess not.  She'd be so old she'd be a bag of dusty bones, and that would be good enough for her - she deserved it.  But not us.

She threw away perfection and she didn't have henna or Jessica.  After she died, Adam was left alone.  Did he miss her?  Did he remember saying this is at last flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones?

I have always marveled at the phrase "at last."  He must have been naming animals for a little while.  Finally, a mate for me, a completer.  I imagine being in the new world 999 years in saying something like:  this is at last my flesh and my bones the way I always dreamed of being.

And while I like the champagne strawberry blonde, I will never miss gray hair when that day comes.