Gloria and I wore pigtails to school, at least two or three years. Having our hair rebraided was a ritual every day before the school bus stopped for us at the end of our rural driveway.

We climbed up on the red stepstool for the ordeal, the same red stepstool where Mom once gave Dad an accidental reverse Mohawk haircut. Braiding anything is soothing to the braider, but not especially to the girl whose short hairs at the nape of her neck cause tears.

What’s the story about the ornery boy sitting behind a pigtailed girl and dipped the end of her hair in his bottle of ink? Before my time anyway. But Grandpa Neal liked to tug on the end of a braid and tease about who my boyfriend was!

We graduated to ponytails for a few years, then Mom finally let me get my hair cut. I suppose those neat braids and ponytails felt too childlike.

Did any of you ever wear braids or ponytails?

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I’d forgotten about braids until recently reading the compelling book, The Five Wishes of Mr. Murray McBride by Joe Siple. A wonderfully encouraging tale of an unlikely friendship between the very elderly and widowed Mr. Murray McBride and Jason Cashman, a 10-year-old boy with a terminal illness. And the winsome Tiegan, a girl with braids who is “mature beyond her years,” as one reviewer noted, “loyal, smart, and almost a guardian angel.”