Vitamin Wool

Nothing says devotion like rolling countless skeins of raw roving into tightly felted wool ropes. The warm softness of the fiber beneath my soap-covered hands. The distinct, fuzzy feeling of the wool changing from cotton candy consistency to firm-cored perfection. These endless wooly worms, ranging from ten to eighteen inches in length, and compose a beautiful blue-and-brown tribute to my creativity, my vanity, and my earnest desire to be different. Soon, this hope will be achieved with the donning of a head full of wooly dreadlocks, carefully braided into my own hair. This natural semblance of the "real thing" - dreadlocks formed with my own tangled tresses - offers the benefit of easy removal and virtually no damage to the real head of hair in question. I'm thrilled at the prospect of reaching my goal. I may be almost halfway there! True, the mountain of wool seems barely diminished, and my hands sport from a stiff outer coating of olive oil soap that just won't wash away. I gaze at my precious periwinkle-hued dreadlocks, and I wonder: Will I have grown to hate them by the time I install them on my head? Will they last a mere several days before I can't take the itching, the fuzzies, the smell? The preconceived notions of others weigh hard on my mind, and I brush them aside with great difficulty. This is, after all, a long-held dream. Dreadlocks symbolize nothing in particular to me except, perhaps, freedom from viewing my own natural hair day in and day out. But this is a lifelong dream dreams of hair freedom and not some fleeting fancy, and it's reached a new peak of self-sacrifice.

I reach for another hank of raw wool with an equally raw determination. If it strips all the skin off my poor palms to roll the last deadlock, I swear I'll see this project through! It's not often I invest time or money in my appearance. And this will (in theory) provide relief from the daily question of whether my hair will behave. I look with moderated excitement toward the day when I'll face the world, a dreaded woman, and I smile.

Nothing says devotion like wool roving.

Especially once it's attached to my head.