“Please don’t be mad, Mama, but I cut his hair shorter than I was trying for.  It is just so curly it’s hard to get it even.”

“That’s okay.  Don’t worry.  I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

I flung my phone into the empty passenger seat.   The back flew off as it bounced against the door.  My mouth hardened and my eyes narrowed as I stared at the road through sudden tears and anger as deep as 39 years ago.

My former husband, former for forty years now, had left our two-year-old daughter alone with his face-in-Christmas dinner alcoholic mother – again.  We lived rent-free in a cottage next door to his parents.  He had ignored the strongest words I had ever said to him, up to that point. “Don’t you dare leave Lori alone with Helga.  You know she gets plastered in less than five minutes.”

I did not know he had left Sharon alone.  I had assumed when he took Sharon over to visit, that he was staying with her.  That’s what I reminded him to do.

But. . . Helga had brought Sharon  back to the cottage later, alone, but it was a different Sharon.  My baby girl’s wispy, blonde curls– the silky little feathers I wove my fingers through each night as I cuddled her to sleep – were gone.  Forever.

“I just evened it up a little,” Helga said with a tentative, drunken smile as she stood in the doorway.

“Evened it up my ___,” I thought but dared not say.  I had to go along to get along for our rent-free tiny cottage.  “You cut two inches off.  My baby girl has a Buster Brown pageboy, you blankety blank!!!”

I don’t remember what I actually said as I pulled Sharon inside and shut the door.   That was four decades ago, before I learned to speak up for myself.  Regardless, that night brought my father-in-law’s scalding criticism down on me for “making” Helga get drunk again.

I don’t remember much of that dreadful, short marriage, but it gave me my precious Sharon – as well as a  thorough understanding of Al-Anon.  Soon after the divorce, I had given my heart to Jesus and Sharon and I had been more than fine ever since.  Also, many fruitful seasons of counseling had flowed through the years since then.

However, when I opened the door to my daughter’s house and looked at my grandson –his cap of ringlet curls gone– I saw my freshly-shorn Sharon and Helga.  I slammed my bags down on the counter and started to walk to the bathroom, so mad I was afraid to speak for fear I would shout or scream or  both.  I never did either and I certainly did not want to do that to my daughter or scare my two grandsons, who were already upset because I had not given them their usual boisterous hug and teasing from Nana when I walked in the door.

“Please don’t do this, Mama!” Sharon said as her eyes shone wet with unshed tears.