three marias

September 2, 2008 | Filed Under inspired 

it started saturday when jude, having napped, was up late, and i was trying to compel him to sleep with drowsiness inducing television viewing.  the sound of music was on and, being one of those movies that i loved and pretended endlessly when i was a kid, my boys haven’t seen it because i want them to be old enough to completely love it as i did.  but it was on and they were singing about being sixteen, no, seventeen, no, going on sixteen and it was raining outside of the gazebo so he watched it.  lots of it.  i don’t think he went to sleep with it since ernie took over shortly after the matching kids sang out their austrian harmony to the glamorously cigaretted baroness.

when i was an older sister demanding that my brothers march and sing and otherwise von trapp themselves on our front porch, the pastor’s girls and myself outnumbering them, i remember wishing that maria’s hair was not so flat, so short.  probably because it was the eighties and the word flat with regard to hair had not been used adoringly in a long time.  but now, grown, flat bangs on my forehead, on saturday, i thought to have my own hair cut like a problematic nun.  so easy! so julie!  so maria! i can see myself welcoming bed-jumping and other boisterousness with open, wool covered, guitar playing arms.

then i saw this maria, inspired by her “boyfriend and love.”  her tights, so turquoise! her scarf! her hair, not short, still flat, whisked away with her fingers as she walked out the door.  and her, another maria, the third, a bag in a not-me yellow, a totally not-me bow in an equally not-me red stripe.  her bangs, her sunglasses, her admission that she loves “everything that is a bit much.”  inspiring maria!

too many marias!  and way, way too many exclamation points.

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