French Braids and Comfortable Clothes

Time Stamp: This is me now. 2025

Extra pounds cradle and protect a body once sculpted thin and sharp. Thousands of eyes carving, constructing. They wield a chisel made from standards of age and beauty. The me that is me peeks out behind sentences that hang like curtains across the page. Clothing is no longer a costume I put on to perform age. My concern is with its function. Keep me warm. Let me move easily, to garden, to hike in the woods, to shovel snow, to walk, to have ease, care for and be cared about in. Be soft and welcoming when my grandchildren hug me. Let them rest their small precious cheeks on the ledge of my now protruding belly through which they might hear my beating heart, an ever-constant love song.

My hair grows long and wild, sheets of white. No chiseled bob, shaved undercuts, no more discipline meted out by a cut to perfection. Even more beautiful after a tumbled, crazy night of dreams and sometimes nightmares. When it wakes, it stands on end, electric, crackling, cackling like an old Irish crone. I feel like one too. Cailleach, her name, is bound to the land and embodies the mysteries of life and death’s transitions. Space I inhabit now. Ancient memories stored deep in muscles and bones fuel messengers that travel from my brain to my arms and into my hands. Short, stumpy fingers, square nails cut close, no varnish, no manicures. Clippings litter my bathroom sink. Down the drain they go, clinging to old pipes where they join other remnants, mementos left by other women who lived here since the pipes were first laid down in 1912. Nerves in my fingers take time to fire up, to form a stable connection to the past like an old car starting up after being left in a barn. I start and stop and begin again and begin again until finally I weave a sloppy, crooked French braid down the back of my head.

Time Stamp: This is the researcher/academic me that was/is (1976-2025)

The name “French” braid is a misnomer. The exact origin of this braid is a hotly contested topic. Some believe its origins trace back thousands of years to North Africa. Others contend it may have originated in China’s Sung Dynasty. Still others name the Greeks, Romans and Vikings. I research further and find that during slavery, braids were used to create secret messages and maps, to hide tools, seeds and other treasures needed after escape. In Native American cultures, braids conveyed messages about identity, lineage, and achievements. Braids were an important part of Celtic culture, often used to signify feminine strength. Genetic lineage I share. In the 1800s in France and again in the 1990s in the US, specific groups creatively designed braids to convey cultural meaning; others then appropriated and commodified these braids as fashion trends, disregarding their origins. As my body slowly returns to itself, sheds its virtual garments, ends its time as a trend and reclaims its history, it seeks to find its origin story.

Time Stamp: This was me. 1989

Ironically, during a time of life when your memory is supposed to fail you, mine is strong. It inserts itself into consciousness without an express invitation. Nature, birdsong and my grandchildren soften my defenses. They are easily breached. A reminiscence comes now, when and where I learned to make a French braid. Thirty-six years old, an anxious mother, in an unhappy marriage, an incredibly stressful job I could never leave behind, worries about money, a three-hour commute on a suburban railroad. I share this long ride with another mother. We turn in and towards, speak to each other in whispers. The cracked leather seats are long and wide, there is no separation between us. She patiently teaches me how to make this kind of braid. To learn how to feel your hair in such a way that as you grasp each new lock to add to a strand, it is approximately equal to what you add to the others. To do it all by yourself. It neatens messy, errant, different length hairs. It no longer hangs in your eyes; a curtain opens, a tear falls through. It’s as if your spine rears up, bursts out of the back of your neck, and now visible, continues up along the back of your head. An axis making both sides of your head perfectly symmetrical and holds it up. It pulls your slumped shoulders up and back.

To make this kind of braid you feel your way through. You do it blind. You close your eyes and focus with deep, concentrated attention. The railroad car rocks back and forth. My fingers repeat; gather, then weave, gather, then weave, gather, then weave three times and then again. Slowly build from the top of head to the nape of my neck. My body sways in time with the train, lulls me into feeling soothed. Today mothers have Substacks, Instagrams and the books they write to share/confess/ their pain, rage, desires, traumas and triumphs. Many of the mothers I know, during and before my time, did not reveal, much less write or be public about these things. We confided in our private journals, whispered to another woman, or perhaps revealed our secrets in the way we taught each other to braid our hair. To see our own reflection in another’s fallen tear.

Time Stamp: This is me now. 2025

Does everyone you’ve never met in the real world thinking they know you bring you relief? Do you really feel known? I only ever felt known when I wrote something here or on Instagram, and another woman said I gave her words. People thought they “knew” me, but they did not. I kept it close to the vest and very, very pretty.

Time Stamp: This is me now. (2024-2025)

For many reasons, again these days I am looking to soothe an anxious self. Feel my way through something unfamiliar. Learn again how to contain all the messiness, the uneven hairs of it. To be held up by a braid that snakes up the back of my head, extending my spine. Recently, we found out that my life partner of 28 years, has a very aggressive cancer. The doctor tells us this kind of cancer will most likely visit us again. Surgery, the first line of defense, has been done with excellent results and good recovery. We wait now for the next prong of attack, radiation. With the support of family and friends, we’ve managed well. I’ve managed well, being there for us both and not yet falling down the cliff of caregiving as I’ve done before. He’s a profile in courage.

Considering what’s happening in my personal life, I want to shut out the news. I can’t handle social media and have not looked at my apps for weeks to prepare for leaving them for good. My old website is down, my LLC dissolved. My nervous system has calmed in their absence. I struggle with the question of how much I want to or should be present in my experiencing of what is happening in this country. How much should I share of what I am discovering, the secrets I have kept, the rage I feel? I know only that I must rest, care for me, my partner, my family, friends, practice paying focused attention again and continue writing. The contours of the world I move in now as I wear my French braid and comfortable clothes, takes shape through biopsies, hospitals, doctors, birds, snowfalls, homemade chicken vegetable soup, a little boy’s bike scraping my leg when I try to teach him how to ride it and texts from a 10-year-old filled with emojis and declarations of love. This world is where my truth is. This return to the realness and messiness of everyday life is, for me, a political act. Is it selfish to just want these last years of my life to be lived in truth? To stop the ravages of stress and cortisol overloads on my already deteriorating body? To leave my many loyal followers (and so many have been) in the social media world behind?

Time Stamp: This was/is me. (Spring 2024-2025)

Twenty-two journals of Marilyn Milner’s experiment (see this post) later, I remember myself and live again in a real, fleshy, imperfect body. I welcome its unruly, unpredictable aging. After serving me well, it deserves to do what it wants to, free of discipline and societal expectations. I am satisfied with my once again ordinary life. I slowly fade from public memory. This pleases me. I know who loves me and who I love. I believe they love me. Something in the past I felt was a tentative thing. I know a long walk in the woods or a seat by the marsh listening to the birds will center me, remind me of the inevitability of these changes in me, in my beloved partner, as part of the glorious plan directed by the natural world. I give myself over to it. I am reminded that is where we all live, whether we admit it, not on social media, where nothing is true or real. Intuition and a newfound trust in it, leads me to tarot cards that trick my rational mind, books and poems that, like a Rorschach test, spark memories, thoughts and associations that command me to write about them. I see things I never saw before or saw but did not really see. Back and forth, I read, I write, a rhythmic rocking. Back and forth. I open curtains, letting in light. Doors are closed, others unlocked. I find hidden rooms.

Time Stamp: This was/is/becoming me/her. (17 February 1900-February 2025)

These days I turn to my Irish ancestors to create cultural meaning. I get to know my Irish grandmother. As best you can know someone who was never physically present to you and is not now. She died before I was born. She is the absent, erased one in my memoir. An impromptu visit to a cousin reveals truths about her that boomerang across generations, that already live in my genes. Helices braid secrets that become mine epigenetically carried in my father’s sperm. I imagine her blue eyes, or are they mine, imploring? Whisper them to another, she says, teach my great-granddaughter how to make a French braid on the back of her head. How to extend a spine when you need to. I read voraciously about Irishwomen who lived when she did, when her mother did, when her grandmother did. I want to know her. Uncover the mystery of her, of me. A long document forms from reading, remembering, wondering, questioning, writing. There are many equal signs between their lives and mine. A braid, another strand, another connection gathered up and woven into. What will this gathering up become? Fiction, auto-fiction, a collection of essays? I’m happy not to know just now. Perhaps I will write it just for myself and for her.

Time Stamp: This is me here. February 9, 2025

I’ve decided to stay in this space because there is no algorithm within my sphere here. We can be slow, attentive, reflective. We can control what we write and what others see. Comments left by you are often more inspiring than what I have written that prompts them. You reach out to each other within them. This feels like mutual aid, like resting. I feel such a need for community now. I realize with incredible gratitude there is one. I don’t have to look for it. It is already here. I hope you might feel the same way.

Very curious to know what you are thinking about being on social media these days and where your searches for meaning in older life, or life in general, are taking you these crazy days?