becoming.

the day before my grandma passed, i got a haircut. bangs were something i suddenly needed to have, like a teenager at the mall before a school dance, unwaveringly indignant on the necessity of THAT outfit. looking back, i think i needed hair to hide soaked eyes behind at the impending funeral of the wise and seemingly fearless woman who raised me. i walked into her house after the haircut, as i had for the last 4 months since quitting my New York CIty job to waitress and be with her, everyday. she barely moved, exhausted, as she looked me in the eyes.

“Those bangs are very becoming on you,” she said.

“What does that mean?” i asked. “they’re cute? i’ll get by with them?”

Mary, an english teacher, quoted Macbeth (of course): “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.”

i still didn’t understand: “but are they cute??” (again, 24 here. why did i not think of the irony in that a day before she passed, she was quoting this... of all of Shakespeare’s lines).

years later, i laughed at the release of Michelle Obama’s book: Becoming. well, first i cried at my desk at work, then, laughed. Mary had loved Michelle, had emailed me the morning after Obama was elected, while i was living in morocco with “I do hope Michelle keeps her husband grounded during his presidency.” she would’ve been the first in line for her book.

the next afternoon, in her last moments, i held the hand that held mine for 24 years, pulled my body close to hers and onto her lap, the hand that lifted the leaves of her cucumber plants to show me that watering meant getting at the roots — really digging down.

Becoming is something that we can grow into, like plants grow from their roots, like we grow into ourselves, like we grow into bangs. What a gift —that there are so many words beyond “cute” or “hot” or “badass” or “adorable.” that words like becoming describe death like they describe bangs. that — hopefully — we are becoming in our living like in our dying. that there is no demarcation between the two, and that we are living and remarking on haircuts and holding hands right up until a last moment, and then still holding hearts in all the years past our last hand-hold on this earth.