jo march and me.

Today I wore my hair in two braids.

Okay, so I could honestly say that sentence every day since Wednesday of this week. It’s just that I’ve not been able to braid my hair for so long now, that it was quite exciting once I realized I’ve achieved braiding length.

Exciting enough to last five days.

And tonight, I was unplaiting them before bed and suddenly felt like one of those lovely girls from Little Women. Only my braids were so short that I could only be Jo–after she had gone and cut her hair off and sold it in order to bring home some money for her family.

Except my reason for cutting my hair was not quite so altruistic. A Chorus Line wanted my hair short, so four hours and four hundred dollars of their money later, it was. And gone was my ability to wear braids.

But not anymore.

Thus, the five days worth of braids, I guess. Consider it my version of catching up.

But back to Jo March. I think I identified with her because she was a writer and a dreamer and generally lived her life appalled by the thought of settling down to some sort of status quo existence. She spent her nights awake later than was proper, spelling out the stories that lived within her, and her days with purple shadows under eyes and ink stains on her fingers.

And everyone thought she would marry her neighbor Lorry.
Even I hoped that she would, while watching the movie.
Though this may have had something to do with the fact that Christian Bale played Lorry and well, I thought he was cute.
But she wouldn’t be with him like that.
She couldn’t.
So she didn’t.

She cared tremendously for him, but there wasn’t that spark of recognition when she looked into his eyes, I think. There wasn’t the dreamer’s and co-conspirator’s acknowledgement; the realization that not all who wander are lost, as JRR Tolkien said, and so maybe they would spend some time wandering together and not minding so much that the destination was unclear as long as the story along the way was something to write home about.

And then when she met Friedrich–another writer; a German one–it’s like she came home, I guess. And you know, I hate to admit it, but I was shallow enough to mind. And part of it was because the actor who played Friedrich was not nearly so winsome and handsome as Christian Bale and I know, I know, I know: who cares?

Me, I guess. Or at least me then–and in my defense, it hadn’t been all that long since I had watched him in Newsies, and fallen a little in love with him as the singing and dancing tough-as-nails orphan who went as Cowboy and dreamt of Santa Fe. And I guess the other part was that, upon watching this story, I was a little afraid that I was doomed to marry an unattractive German man whose accent would confuse my parents and who would constantly be apologizing for both World Wars when he wasn’t writing poetry and  generally replacing the th sound with a grand old z sound.

Blame it on my identifying with Jo March, but the thought struck me and no, I did not relish it.

Oh, but life has taken me down some paths I never chose, but found myself walking anyway since then, and now Friedrich looks like a sweet walk in the park. And more than that–I think he and Jo had a similar view on life.

On magic.

On the point of it all and how it’s chiseled and defined by every living moment. Even the ones where it feels like nobody is looking. Even when we’re listening to the radio and suddenly somebody whom you’ve never met is singing about the father that he never met and your heart breaks a little and you’re more aware of life in general and there being a point to it all.

Or when you read a text and it’s a friend telling you in May that she’s already thinking about your birthday in June and tears are forming in the corners of your eyes because you never thought this birthday would be good–not since November, at least.

And as silly as it sounds, you’ve been stealing yourself for the worst since then. Thinking that this year would be hard and terrible and something to survive–certainly not something to celebrate!–but here it comes, another milestone and here are your loved ones, wanting to help you celebrate and you can’t help but see that yes, there is something worth celebrating after all.

And there it is, again: more of that point to it all.

And I think that’s why Jo fell in love with Friedrich. I think he got it or maybe he got her but anyway, they were the kind of kindred spirits that surpassed some of the things otherwise known as barriers. Even silly ones like accents. And being German, in general.

Though I still don’t want to be with Friedrich, per se.

Which is why it is a very good thing that I am not actually Jo March, I suppose.