Growing up my mother would get haircuts sporadically. She’d be sporting a curly-haired bob and when the bangs grew to an annoying length, she’d give into a mall haircut. Occasionally she returned with what my sister and I, as kids, called “a boy haircut.”

“Why did you have to go so extreme?” my sister and I would ask.

“I figured if I’m paying for them to cut it, I want it to be really noticeable.”

I’ve reflected upon this “philosophy” throughout my life, most recently with my due-to-the-flood renovation. Our hardwood floors sustained the most damage during the flood and for two months we’ve lived on cardboard and paper floors. Today, they are back, brand new, just like they were the night before the flood. 

It’s a weird sensation. It’s like I waited months for a haircut appointment, spent eight hours at the salon and stepped out looking exactly like it did before I started the whole thing.

“But we’ll have a new kitchen too,” my husband reminds me.

“Oh yeah,” I say as I look around in a strange sense of deja vu.

I guess I should never have been calling it a renovation; it was actually a restoration.