I come from a long line of head-choppers (Holly Schindler)

 ...and that's why this post has no picture. 

Because when I say "head-choppers," I mean women who cut their heads out of photos. The biggest pile of missing-head photos are the ones my maternal grandmother to scissors to. My own mother wasn't much better, mostly avoiding the whole picture-taking completely.

Mom often shakes her head about her mother's head-chopping. Her mother was really pretty; at family reunions, she was always "the beautiful one," "my beautiful cousin," etc. When my grandfather died, aaaall the men in the KC area came out of the woodwork. In her late 40s, she beat the bejeezus out of a Chiefs player who wouldn't leave her alone (which is a long story). 

But the head-chopping wasn't about dissatisfaction with looks--I mean, in a way, it was. But beneath that, it was just that they were a line of women who were too damn busy for layers of makeup and hours with curling irons. My mom owned the same eyeshadow palette my entire childhood. I don't mean she kept buying the same color, either. I mean the exact same palette. For over 10 years. 

I come from women who were fishers and gardeners and boaters, cooks and builders and learners and sewers. My maternal great-aunt managed a hat box factory when she was 14. Also a long story. 

It was assumed that when I bumped up against something, I would work my way through it rather than back out. If I ever said I didn't know how to do something, Mom would just growl, "Why don't you?" which meant, I know you don't now. Go figure it out.

The women in my family have always had short nails with dirt under them. Which is often not great for photos. But it is, I have learned, quite good for the soul.

~

The parents in Holly Schindler's work are often imperfect but they all have some sort of dirt under their nails. She is the author of the YA A Blue So Dark