honey

when i was little – maybe seven years old – i tipped an entire jar of honey over my head. i was being silly... showing off in front of my favourite audience... mum, dad and my sisters. i knew the lid of the jar wasn’t on properly, so i thought it would be funny to pretend to tip the jar over my head. yes, even at seven, my sense of humour was that sharp. sadly, although i was clearly hilarious, my fine motor skills were not developed well enough to execute this killer physical comedy without a minor flaw. initially, the joke was going pretty well... “look at me everyone, i’m going to pretend to tip this honey over my head and it’s going to be hilarious!” but before i knew what was happening, my under-developed forearm muscles lost control and i tipped the jar too far. the loose lid came off and my curly hair was bathed in 500g of woolworths’ finest capilano.

it’s likely that this would make a lot of parents mad, but not mine. everyone just laughed at me and grabbed a piece of toast to rub on my head... even classic comedy like this wasn’t enough to fully interrupt a wallis meal. i finished my breakfast with honey periodically dripping onto my shoulders, then mum helped me wash it all out. again, it didn't occur to anyone that washing the honey out should take precedence over finishing breakfast. this was when we discovered that 500g of honey doesn’t technically ever wash out. it’s like glitter... you think you’ve got it all out until you stand in the sun for a while and realise that you will never, ever have it all out.

for weeks after the incident random members of the family would walk up to me and stick pieces of paper to my head to see how sticky my hair still was. maybe it wasn’t weeks. maybe it was days... or hours... at any rate, it became the joke that kept on giving for far longer than i had ever intended. just last week i found the beginnings of a beehive on the crown of my head while i was searching for some bobby pins i’d been storing there since my 1997 formal. again, that’s probably not entirely true... but because i once tipped an entire jar of honey on my head, there’s a slight chance it might be.

at the risk of boring you all with more of my grief, i’ll finish with this.

i’m discovering every day that my mum is like a 500g jar of capilano honey. (there's a sentence i never thought i'd type.) through no particular skill of my own, she ended up being poured all over my life. at times that life was a sticky mess... but more often than not it was full of laughter. i’m glad that she is proving difficult to wash away, for i’d like to hang on to the sticky, funny memories for a few more days yet... or weeks... or maybe even for the rest of my life.

me and mum: hair related shenanigans since 1987