The Significance of Curly Hair

Growing up, Gram was my best friend. We shared a double bed in my family’s cottage until I was nine. Fifteen years later, I got the call that she’d fallen and hit her head. All I could see was her mouthing, “Don’t you love me enough to come back home?” I wept on the plane as I began to write her story, the one she’d asked me to write in ninth grade.

Gram and I were polar opposites. She spent much of her life barefoot and pregnant. I was a gay, career-driven, independent decision-maker.

Searching through old relics, we found a time capsule in Gram’s drawer, revealing clues to her dark era, her 1957 breakdown. Dark green pills, a bank book, scribbles on an envelope: answers to unasked questions. She survived stress and abuse without things I take for granted: income, a car, stocked pantry shelves. She did it all with unconditional love, never revealing her pain.

I’d spent my adult life avoiding becoming a “traditional” woman, but her death freed something in me. I realized the importance of child-rearing, understanding a woman like me can balance career and family. Love and support create happy, healthy kids. I could pass Gram’s spirit onto a child, braiding generations together from lifetime to lifetime.

Kara Zajac is a freelance writer, chiropractor, mother of a daughter, wife, entrepreneur, musician, and die-hard romantic. She received her Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Life College of Chiropractic and for the last twenty years has maintained a private wellness practice in Dawsonville, GA, where she helps people revitalize their lives by healing the brain and body naturally with chiropractic care, energy work, and Braincore Neurofeedback Therapy. Kara is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist who started playing drums at two years old and currently tours the Southeast with The Jessie Albright Band. She keeps people laughing with her blog, www.karazajac.com. The follow-up story, The Special Recipe for Making Babies, was a finalist in 2022’s Charlotte Lit/Lit South Award for Nonfiction. Kara’s work has been published in The Scarlet Leaf Review, Imperfect Life Magazine, Ripped Jeans and Bifocals, Just BE Parenting, and Stigma Fighters, a magazine supporting people battling mental illness. Kara resides in the North Georgia Mountains with her wife Kim and daughter Senia Mae. She has just completed her first fiction novel: The Waiting is the Hardest Part. Kara can usually be found at home in the kitchen and enjoys sipping wine while hanging her feet off the dock.