Porchwood Hollow

A Porchwood Hollow Story About Shear Madness

There was once a little girl in Porchwood Hollow whom everyone knew as Little Miss Blue Eyes.

She was a lovely little thing, with eyes that could melt the sternest heart and an extraordinary talent for looking as though she’d just survived a small natural disaster.

Her mother affectionately called her the Beautiful Mess.

And a beautiful mess she was.

There was almost always paint somewhere on her. Sometimes her hands, sometimes her cheeks, and occasionally in places that left her mother wondering whether the child had been painting a picture or rolling around in one.

Her clothes rarely matched. Patterns and colors were apparently suggestions rather than rules, and her socks seemed to have no particular interest in belonging to the same pair.

And then there was the hair.

Oh, the hair.

It was the sort of hair that could be carefully washed, brushed, and arranged in the morning, only to resemble an abandoned bird’s nest by lunchtime.

Her mother tried everything.

Different brushes. Different conditioners. Gentle encouragement. Negotiations. The occasional desperate appeal to whatever woodland spirits might be responsible for such things.

Nothing worked.

Eventually, her mother came to a rather sensible conclusion.

She could raise the child.

She could feed the child.

She could love the child with every fiber of her being.

But she could not, for the life of her, keep that child’s hair untangled.

And that was how Little Miss Blue Eyes came to sit in the chair of the most extraordinary hairdresser in Porchwood Hollow.

A woman named Angie.

Now, Angie was not the sort of woman one ordinarily pictured when imagining a fairy godmother.

She wore black leather instead of silk, rode a magnificent pink Harley instead of arriving in a pumpkin carriage, and had a wild tumble of jet-black curls that seemed to possess a personality entirely their own.

And if there was any magic about Angie, it wasn’t in a wand or a spell.

It was in the way she made people feel.

She had a voice that could carry across three counties, a laugh that could interrupt a funeral procession, and a personality that generally arrived several minutes before she did.

But beneath all that noise and attitude was a heart so enormous that there was hardly room for it in her chest.

Angie knew hair.

More importantly, Angie knew people.

In fact, Angie knew just about everything there was to know about everyone in Porchwood Hollow.

She knew who was getting married, who was getting divorced, who had fallen in love with someone they shouldn’t have, and who was pretending not to be heartbroken when the whole town could see otherwise.

She knew which husbands were sleeping on the sofa, which wives were considering leaving, which children were keeping secrets from their parents, and which parents were quietly worried about their children.

She knew who was struggling financially, who was grieving, and who had received news they weren’t quite ready to share with the world.

And yet, remarkably, Angie rarely repeated a thing.

Oh, she talked.

Heavens, did that woman talk.

She could carry on three conversations at once, shout over a hair dryer, and tell a story so loudly that someone passing on the sidewalk might mistake it for a public announcement.

But there were things Angie simply did not discuss.

Because somewhere along the way, without anyone officially appointing her, Angie had become the unofficial Keeper of Secrets in Porchwood Hollow.

Her salon chair was a peculiar sort of sanctuary.

People arrived carrying more than split ends and overdue haircuts. They brought their worries, their disappointments, their embarrassing mistakes, their hopes, and sometimes the sort of heartbreak they couldn’t quite bring themselves to discuss anywhere else.

Angie listened.

Sometimes she offered advice.

Sometimes she offered a rather colorful opinion.

And sometimes she simply washed someone’s hair and let them cry where nobody else could see.

Whatever happened in Angie’s chair generally stayed in Angie’s chair.

Unless, of course, the secret involved someone doing something particularly stupid.

In which case, Angie might offer a very loud opinion about the stupidity of people in general.

Without mentioning names.

And then, one day, into that chair climbed Little Miss Blue Eyes, whose hair looked as though a family of squirrels had been using it for winter storage.

Angie took one look.

The Keeper took one look at Angie.

And without either woman saying much of anything, an understanding was reached.

The Keeper would continue raising the child.

Angie would handle the hair.

It was an arrangement that benefited everyone, particularly Little Miss Blue Eyes, who no longer had to endure her mother attempting to negotiate with a comb.

And so began a small tradition.

Little Miss Blue Eyes would arrive with her impossible tangles, Angie would settle her into the chair, and somehow, between the shampoo, the comb, the laughter, and whatever stories were being told that day, the knots would disappear.

There was something rather magical about it.

Not because Angie possessed any extraordinary powers, although several residents of Porchwood Hollow had their suspicions.

But because she had patience.

And kindness.

And the remarkable ability to make a little girl feel that there was absolutely nothing wrong with being a beautiful mess.

And perhaps that was why people trusted Angie with their secrets.

She understood that people, much like hair, could become terribly tangled.

Sometimes through carelessness.

Sometimes through circumstances beyond their control.

And sometimes simply because life had a peculiar way of tying knots where none had existed before.

Angie never expected anyone to arrive perfectly put together.

She simply welcomed them into her chair and began working through whatever needed untangling.

Years later, the Keeper would come to understand that some of the most important people in a child’s life are not necessarily the ones who teach grand lessons or make magnificent speeches.

Sometimes, they are simply the people who make difficult things easier.

The ones who take a tangled situation, sit you down, and patiently work through it.

One knot at a time.

Some fairy godmothers carry magic wands.

Little Miss Blue Eyes had one who carried a hairbrush.

And if that fairy godmother happened to arrive on a big pink Harley, with wild black curls and enough personality to frighten the squirrels out of the trees?

Well.

That was simply an added bonus.

Because every beautiful mess deserves someone who knows how to untangle the difficult parts without ever making her feel like she was the problem.

And in Porchwood Hollow, that someone was Angie.

And as for the secrets of the town?

Well, Angie knew them all.

But she wasn’t telling.