When Time Was Hair

An unlikely Christmas story by an unlikely stepdad

She smiled at me through her big, brown eyes and I wondered: What worlds and shared memories await us, strangers in a strange land?

I was alone with a three year old stranger. Her name was Iglika, Bulgarian primrose, the first flower to bloom in spring. It was 2010 - the year of the tiger. I tried to recall the last time I was in the company of a toddler. Memory and car parked on a hill, Iglika’s mother running a life’s errand downstream. The grey sky hung low, but the joyful toddler was waving hands, singing away a song I could hardly understand. Later, I would learn she had many such songs, partially made-up in her own secret language. I turned to look back at the passionate singer in her tiny car seat.

“You must promise to love her first and foremost, even before her mother,” said a voice, one that lived inside me, yonder, beyond reason.

What if you and I are far from strangers? What if we chose each other in more than a happenstance dance? - I thought, waiting for Iglika’s mother to return from her errand, to start the engine. That summer, her mother and I crossed a bridge - unknowingly moving closer to romance and more. Backpacks on, we prepared for a ten mile hike. I approached a shimmering waterfall and stepped on the bridge, when the voice spoke once again, foreshadowing what would take years to embody: “This is not about you anymore. You’re to take care of both mother and daughter.” I had been single for three years, obsessing over my films, possessed by utopia of spiritual enlightenment with the lofty goal of transforming raw primordial energy into creative triumph. But the time had come to learn to cross bridges, to be a stepfather and a husband.

Her first asthma attack didn’t scare me. Her mother was at work, so I laid down and put my hands on her little chest. She was laboring to draw breaths. I didn’t know what it was like to count Iglika’s ultrasound heartbeats, first, second and third kicks; what it was like to spend nine months planning and worrying about a baby and a young mother; and then, there was labour, deliverance, changing diapers, potty training, crawling, walking, falling, first spoken words. (I make a note to ask her mother what Iglika’s first words were.) I did, however, know that feeling her body heat rise as she continued to strain, I was now charged with her care. During the asthma attack, I became a parent. We bought an inhaler the next day.

Iglika would jump in bed and snuggle between her mom and me, only to push me away because she missed her dad, because she was still processing the separation. Because she feared being abandoned, or replaced. The pushing away came to pass, as did the anger fits which made sense because I had read Carl Jung’s studies about children of divorced parents. What is left unsaid, unearthed by the parents, is expressed by their children, painfully excavated and processed through every developmental stage. I presume even in old age. All of the pain, generational trauma, karma - whatever you want to call it in today’s age of self-help - would dissolve when Iglika sang; when she danced at home or on the stage; played in the park, asking me to swing her up to the stars. I made up stories about the adventures of Grandpa Comet. To help her sleep. To help her cope with travel and unfamiliar places.

We didn’t have chairs around the dinner table because, if you were to ask Iglika, “my parents are hippies.” The absence of dining room chairs allowed us to fit ten people at the round table in our small living room apartment. Ten plus one - community. We had managed to turn every meal into an intimate gathering – our knees close to the floor, elbows touching, hearts even closer. Friends loved to come dine with us, to enjoy stimulating conversations paired up with homemade meals. We would start dinner by holding hands, blessing each other, the fresh food, the hearts and hands of those who work the land, and so we would bless the years to unfold. Dinners without chairs became a blueprint of what was possible. Only if neighbors dined together more often, sitting low to the ground, instead of dining in stone cold towers, tops reaching for the clouds.

There is the Brothers Grimm fairy tale featuring the long hair of Rapunzel. Hair is memory, and as such it is more than a rope for a prince to climb up, hair is more than a princess escaping imprisonment. Iglika’s hair is long and, I like to imagine, the memories it holds are community dinners, Bulgarian folk dancing, live music in our tiny apartment, the film crew, the actors when we turned our lives and home into a film set. Her hair is thick with memories, holding the weight of both laughter and lessons, joy and mistakes. If I could, I’d comb out the tangled threads of pain and leave the strands of light only. But, for better or worse, her hair also holds the bedroom door without a solid core, and the cheap wall that bears the furious imprints of my foot and fist. Like the door, my core was far from solid, my values meandering between feelings of what was intuitively and conceptually right, morally wrong, Buddhism, Hinduism, kriya yoga and a vague remembrance of being baptized in an Orthodox church.

The biggest driving force behind my existence was my ambition to make movies. Movies set the course; movies diverted me from the course; movies capsized the ship, crushed the car, more often than not, and, in the end, it was unbridled filmmaking that left us with a negative balance in our bank account. I calmed myself down, reasoning that my karma balance was positive and it was all that mattered. Today, I’ve learned, we live in a material world. We must invest in going through the gate of discernment. I prefer mother’s old world saying, “Do good, throw it in the sea.” I prefer the saying to explaining good intention through karma.

After I broke a broom in another sequential anger outburst, an online search told me I could suffer instant death from a heart attack induced by rage. Instead of sweeping clean my temple, I broke the very tool to help me make sense. I’m sure the broken broom also lives in Iglika’s hair somewhere. A few years ago, I wrote a letter asking Iglika to forgive the holes in the door and wall, the hole in my heart, the broom and the slap. On occasion, Iglika got the worst of me because she was powerless and I was helpless, broken by the brutal reality of making a living from art, blinded by my perceived gift to make movies at all cost. My wife would often say, “Iglika brings out the little boy in you”. That boy grew up entangled in ivy, and by his early forties, he fought to set himself free and, in doing so, he first set free those he loved most. But it’s the beginning of the New Year and this is supposed to be a joyful letter to you. Yet, for the impact of the photos that follow to land, I’m obliged to give you some context. The moments of joy eclipsed the darkness, but I read somewhere we are prone to remember the worst.

One day, Iglika insisted on beading a necklace for her mother – “Now.” Tomorrow was absent from her actions. The past, I assumed, as well, subtracted from the present. Her journey started at ground zero and she invited me to climb down, into her world. Soon I found out, it was my responsibility to initiate her into the paradox of Time. To explain patience and regret and foresight. Or, at least, try to. To break down mistakes and lessons learned. To project hopes and dreams into an elusive future.

Where does a parent even begin with parenting?

We started to draw with markers on a white board, together, after dinner, because Iglika was afraid to start on her own. “What will I draw?” she would ask. So we worked on just starting - starting to draw, starting to learn the English alphabet (she spoke only Bulgarian until four years old), starting to dance, starting to do math, starting to do chores, starting to love… Time and starting continue to live in her hair.

I took the first photo in 2011, when Time was five. Iglika, dressed in a shirt embroidered by her grandma, was just learning to dance. The rhythm of our ancestors echoed as she stepped onto the stage, her movements already hinting at the fluid, timeless grace of a culture and its dance. A dance that carries the weight of all we’ve shared - and all we would still share.

I have never held my stepdaughter in my arms as a little baby, but I hold her in my heart as she flicks her head back. To look at us. Time is eighteen years old. It is 2024, she is dancing at the annual Bulgarian Christmas concert. I had flown in from a short and strenuous business trip in Bulgaria the night before. My wife had suggested that I extend my stay in Bulgaria, but I knew I had to be back for what could very well be Iglika’s last Christmas concert in Seattle. She graduates in the spring and is looking at attending college out of state or in Europe. Fortunately, her mother caught the moment in the photo bellow. It might not look like it, but this was a very fast dance. I saw Iglika turn twice to look at us, seated three rows away from the stage. If there ever was a hole in my heart, the moment of looking filled it with hope and warmth.

They say when one is in a car crash, time slows. Time also slows down in joy, when a stepdad watches his daughter grow up between two photos. Somehow, her hair connects both.

Happy New Year, friends!

Bogdan