I love hair clips.
Born with a colic covering the front of my head, I’ve never had the beautiful sweeping bangs I’d seen in magazines; in fact, my bangs would stick out, curl under, and generally get in the way. Being a fan of flat, spiky hair, the curve looked too modern, too polished, for me. And so, I began using clips to hold it back. But bobby pins and normal clips let the hair on the edge slip right out, curve over the clip, under, around. So when snap clips came out when I was in middle school, I was saved. A few years back, while wandering Hobby Lobby, I discovered the snap clips I’d waited years to find were actually quilter’s clips! Imagine my surprise at finding a pack of fifty for only five dollars -- a set cost four, and here were tons of them! All shiny and silver, a hole at the end the only mar. Every so often, I stock up. The low cost means I give them away, leave them in cars or friends’ houses, old purses, jacket pockets. They’re littered through my life like odd pennies, always cherished when found unexpectedly. Wandering the mall one day, I discovered an adorable set of vintage fabric tied into bows. Large and cute, I didn’t even wait to get out the door to throw one in my hair. When I took one off, finally, I noticed the glue sticking through the hole. Ah-ha! That’s what it’s for! And so, when I discovered a package of fabric-paper flowers and vintage buttons, I knew what I had to do. Create cute new clips with the buttons and flowers and peg them in my hair. Having never used a glue gun before, I was worried -- will I burn myself? Will I make a mess? Will the paper burn? How fast does it dry? I have, when it comes to creative pursuits, always been a leap first, figure it out later kind of girl. I gather supplies, take a moment to examine what I have, read whatever instructions are available, and GO. It may be why I do several letters in cursive backwards (as I copied what was on the border around the classroom in third grade instead of waiting for the lessons to start), why I wasted lots of watercolors (a glass, some paint, and a ton of water; I now have a technique a love that depends on this mixture), why I can think outside the box (as in cover a sharp corner at work with a sugar packet and tape to keep myself from getting cut). It’s a trait I adore and treasure. This morning, before work, I glued my flowers and buttons and clips together, giggled when it worked, and snapped them in my hair. At the drive through, one little girl asked: “Mommy, how does she have a flower in her hair?” And that, my friends, made it all worth it. **** If one of these things hadn’t happened, would I have arrived at the same result? Would my mind put these puzzle pieces together into the adorable clips? We are the sum of our experiences; since only I have lived through this sequence of events in the body gifted by Divinity, I am the only one who could create what I did when I did how I did. We are all creatures like this. This is how creativity works -- fuse the past with the present and fly into the future.*****
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