“If you don’t wash and brush your hair everyday, spiders will make a web in it”
I remember my Mom telling me this and I remember where I was too. I was standing in the kitchen by the junk drawer where she kept the hairbrush. It was pink and it was a Goody. You know the kind. “DON’T TAKE” was written in black marker on the handle. It was attached to the drawer by a long string. It was a long string because you weren’t supposed to brush your hair in the kitchen. You had to go around the corner where the mirror was hanging in the hall. Brushes and scissors were always on a string. Somehow they would still end up lost, but not quite as often. When you have a house full of so many girls, the brush is an ongoing issue. Shampoo. Shampoo was Herbal Essence…the green kind. I think that was all they had back then, the green kind with the flowery bottle. Later, we moved on to Suave…..but I’m not when.
I never questioned anything my mother said. She knew so many things and she was a lot bigger and older than me. I was extremely traumatized by the idea of spiders in my hair. I don’t like spiders. Daddy Long Legs do not make sense to me. They are very strange. How do they live? I don’t get it? A little round thing, kinda like a piece of fuzz with legs. Eeeeeww My grandmother got bitten on the nose while gardening by some kind of spider. My mom told me it was poisonous, but she didn’t know what kind. I had learned about the dreaded “Black Widow” in school so I assumed that’s what it was.
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Some time after that, we visited the same grandparents for a vacation. They lived in Tucson, Arizona. I remember being certain I was going to be bit by a spider. Even more frightening, it would be a black widow. I thought about this non-stop. I worried about it before we even got near their house. You gotta understand, I was sure. When I found out we were sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags, I was terrified. Somehow I knew sharing this fear with anyone else, was not an option. I had shared fears of mine before and been met with a response that didn’t quite work for me. I also knew it was kind of ridiculous. Yet, I couldn’t seem to let it go.
I had a dream about a spider up in the corner. It spun a web like a strawberry curl. I was reading the “Secret Garden” at the time. I think there is a line in that book that says “a lock of hair like a strawberry curl” or something. I don’t know exactly, but I put it all together… Corner, Curl, Web, Spider, and Me. I have always remembered that dream......weird as it may seem……the spider in the strawberry curl…..always up in the corner waiting to get me………if I didn’t wash and brush my hair.
I thought this was true for I don’t know how long. However, despite all these fears and warnings, I currently wash my hair every week or two. It depends. Generally, it doesn’t get dirty very fast. I think it used to at first. I don’t know. I can’t remember. I think I read somewhere that it isn’t healthy for your hair to wash it everyday…..but to each his own. Based on my experience so far, odds are pretty good that a spider will not spin a web in it. I am going to Honor My Truth. If it ever happens, I’ll let you know.
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