In the pages of three different Bibles, we discover dried violets, ferns and pansies, a marriage certificate, a family tree, obituaries, and a business card for a funeral home. It would be nice, we fantasize, to find money, some old savings tucked away and forgotten. But we also know enough about our family's past to realize that these weighty, elaborate tomes were purchased over a century ago during a time of optimism and richesse. In the ensuing years, our families endured wars and poverty, years when, of necessity, any secret cache would have been spent.
For one of the Bibles, there are no marks at all, no names written inside, no family tree, no records of births or deaths. The edition is particularly fine and in excellent condition for its age. We aren't even sure which side of the family it's from--Mom's? Dad's? Doggedly, I search for evidence, and I gasp when I find it--it almost looks alive--a lock of hair. Not a soft, wispy, infant lock, but a substantial, mouse-brown tress from some young, vital head. Separated from its owner at a formative age, the hair has remained brown, thick and lustrous. It is curled up in Psalms like a smug, sleeping cat.
To whom does this human remnant belong, and why was it saved? Whoever it was, he or she has long since ceased to exist, and is therefore no longer able to clue us in. I'm curious enough, though, to do a bit of research, and I uncover the traditions of other cultures at first: Jewish, Native American, Hindu, Chinese. Mine is a Protestant, Anglo family, and unfortunately, whatever tress-saving traditions may have existed earlier have not continued. According to a recent article in the Seattle P-I, in the 19th century people used to keep scrapbooks of hair. And according to First Haircut in Wikipedia, in Victorian times, boys had long hair just like girls. A boy's hair wasn't cut short until he was becoming a young man. A lock of his first haircut was saved as a testament to his rite of passage from boyhood to manhood.

Still, in a broader sense, the mysterious lock has given me a cause for celebration. After all, it would seem, for at least several generations, our family has been finding meaning via the hair on our heads.
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