Sponge rollers, a reclamation:

It's hard to place the idea of "home." Stories and location evolve like rings of a tree, pushing the circumference out in strange pockets of experience. My childhood memories are like looking through a pinhole, unfocused around the edge, but acutely aware of the emotion at its center.

I have flashes of a winter in the Pocono mountains. Deer and snow, a quiet panoramic off the front porch. We lived in a duplex, shared with another family. My dad worked in construction, running drop ceiling and laminate tile with my mother at his side. Nicole, the girl next door was my closest friend, but imagination; she was my steadfast companion.

Surrounded by wood paneling and utilitarian furnishings, "she" helped me see the potential for each day. My four year old self took great pleasure in one task in particular, sponge rolling my hair.

How the rollers or the skill to adhere them to my head came into my possession, I have vague recollection. I often stole away, among the scatter of clothes piled on a bed or behind a door slightly ajar to witness my mother's ritual. The way she started with her eyes and brought color to her cheekbones. Maybe here is when it started. A desire to create beauty, mimicking the ritual of her, a priestess tucked away in the woodlands of Pennsylvania. I wanted so much to come into her power one day. Nails filed to a soft point, hands that carried chopped wood from a stack into our den. Of the many gifts she could bestow on me, my need to create is one I wield with reverence, a kind of sacred charge.

The permission and encouragement. The time spent.

Rollers, kept neatly waiting.

This is a kind of home, where innocence is protected. A reclamation and knowing that all I have ever needed is within me, a deep well sourced by "her." I need only to draw up the bucket.