Once a month, to Memphis (Collierville) for haircuts. I love the riot of framed images on the walls, the comic books and dog-eared copies of rock band retrospectives on the reading table, the skeleton (with a skeleton dog) that occupies a barber’s chair at the door.
We get haircuts, but we get something more important on these Thursdays: a routine.
Up early and on the road. Time in the car to talk about nothing in particular. A walk through Whole Foods and Costco. Some time around people with tattoos and edgy clothes and an electricity in their gaze that reminds me of the people back in Atlanta. A remarkably good hot lunch at Annie’s Home Cooking in Hot Springs on the way back to New Albany: fried chicken, stewed okra, boiled cabbage, black-eyed peas.
All this comes around once a month. We arrive a little shaggy and impoverished; we leave looking sharper, with the back of our Ioniq 5 stuffed with sparkling water that smells of lime and berries, fat plastic packets of Canadian bacon, and huge transparent boxes of blueberries and eggs.
Another month. Another haircut. Another stroll in Costco. Another sweet day together that, if not logged here, would be lost in the blur of passing time.
