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Now, the Winding Down

© Jody Hart Lehrer

We survived - more or less - our first family excursion to the West Coast. Sunny San Diego was anything but. Except for the first afternoon - on our arrival - when the temperature was a welcoming, teasing 70 degrees, the remainder of our stay never saw the temperature rise above 60 degrees.

My daughter Hannah, who had to be awakened at 3:30 a.m. on the East Coast in order to make a very early flight with her mother and aunt, was not in the most agreeable mood by the end of the long plane trip to California. She was, in fact, out of control. She wailed; she cried; she crumbled under the pressure of sleeplessness. Sleepless in San Diego!

Adding insult to injury, my sister and I had decided to hit the zoo as soon as the plane landed. Seeing the San Diego Zoo, probably the very best in the nation, was our primary goal. Unfortunately, little Hannah was running on fumes.

Although she liked walking through some of the zoo, enjoyed seeing the animals (all warmer than us shivering East Coast-ers watching them in their enviable furs), she was about to reaffirm the importance of "naps" to her mother and aunt.

It was after we had boarded a double decker tour bus to travel through an enormous section of the zoo, that Hannah decided it was time for our lesson. I was able to console - and, therefore, to allow fellow travelers actually to hear what was being said by the tour guide - only by holding her on my lap - like a baby - and whispering to her as we wound through this compound and that.

She had little or no interest in the camel that went walking past - on a LEASH. Nor in the wild birds that flew overhead. She did, fortunately, regain her interest later when I told her she could have her hair fixed in a hair wrap.

There was a booth near the entrance to the zoo, where a young woman would, for any person patient enough, spend much time "wrapping" a single strand of that person's hair, in any of many vibrantly colored strings. Then, at the end of the strand, wrapped alternately with a winding motion and a knotting one, she would adorn the strand with beads.

My daughter was a princess in that chair. She exhibited almost supernatural concentration and endurance. The woman, skillful, and funny and attentive to Hannah's tender age, had to restart the wrap at one point because it pulled too much at Hannah's scalp. At last, the much fussed over strand was bestowed with multi-colored threads and beads, mostly yellows, oranges, and reds, with silver here and there.

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