The Fading Henna

Without fail, henna's distinct scent, an intense, almost palpable mixture of earth and strong perfumes, throws me back a couple of decades...

It's 2009 and I'm in my early teens in my grandma's bedroom in Doha, lying on my side on one of the two double beds in the room, HP laptop in front of me, its fan whirring loudly.

I'm lazily watching my grandma and mum, each perched on the edge of a bed, hunched over, chatting as they skillfully layer oily mounds of henna onto their fingertips. I'm waiting for the little white buffering bar to move far enough for me to hungrily inhale a couple more minutes of a new One Tree Hill episode - streaming on pre-fiberoptic Doha's internet.

My mum uses a teaspoon to carefully apply the henna onto her fingers and line it up one hand at a time. My grandma needs no aids - she uses her fingers.

Over the years, I will have seen this hundreds of times. While henna is commonly used for special occasions, l've always known fingertip henna to be a normal part of daily life at home. Growing up, l viewed it the way you view your mum touching up her greys - an act of self care for her, but in an unfathomably distant future for a version of me that didn't yet exist.

Until recently.

Last year, I was unexpectedly overcome by an urge to see dark red henna stains on my fingertips. It felt innate. As though my first pregnancy had awoken a dormant gene in me. Suddenly, I felt awkward without it. My fingers looked naked. My grandma had long since passed, and my lazy (now heart achingly special) days spent in bed watching her and my mother are foggy memories from a different time; in another country, before university, first, second and third jobs, marriage and the general busyness of adult life.

My mum hadn't casually worn henna on just her fingertips in a few years, a quiet consequence of moving back to New Zealand from Qatar.

Fortunately, as though sensing a change in the air, she'd brought some back with her from a recent trip to the region. She started applying it for me every three days as my due date crept closer - in the hopes of me welcoming my son into the world with celebratory henna on.

When he was born, I held him in my arms, dark, stained, reddish brown fingertips gently brushing his eyebrows, his little nose, his lips. With every delicate touch, I surrendered more and more of myself to him.

The scent of the henna on my fingers blended with his newborn scent to imprint those early moments in my mind - they say scent forms the strongest memories.

The henna on my skin faded quickly and with it, the scent. What stubbornly remained was the stain on my fingernails.

The next month and a half was a typical postpartum haze of anxiety and sleeplessness. Every few weeks during rare moments alone, when I managed to steal a few minutes to stand under the steaming hot water of the shower and let my mind drift, I would notice the way the henna was slowly creeping away from my nail bed.

I started monitoring its movement during showers. It became a private game. Something that was just mine, however small. For some reason, it felt like its disappearance would be significant.

Somehow, I missed it. One day, at almost four months postpartum, I felt my heart tighten as I looked down at my fingers and noticed for the first time that it was all gone - no trace of the thin crescent shaped orange sliver at the top of my nail remained and I couldn't remember the last time l'd seen it. My fingers looked as though there had never been anything other than the light pink of my nail bed there.

I wasn't expecting to be so affected.

The henna lasted nearly four months, almost the entirety of what's often referred to as the fourth trimester. They're some of the hardest months in a woman's life. Overnight, her whole world and sense of self changes drastically.

Suddenly, she's become two. What feels like the most valuable part of her is also the most vulnerable and can fit in her arms. It feels as though every moment of her day is accounted for. She goes to sleep burnt out, she wakes up burnt out - for months. She's in survival mode. Mothers of older children have knowing, sympathetic and inexplicably nostalgic smiles on their faces as they tell her to hold out for the 12 week mark. It seems like there is no end in sight. Until one day, she looks around and realizes that she feels functional, that things have felt more manageable for a while, she hasn't cried in weeks, and every morning starts with his little smiles and giggles.

My little game doesn’t feel so little anymore. Without realizing it, I was charting my progress through those months. The slow but sure fading of the henna subtly reassured me that, although it felt like I was standing still as the world around me kept moving, I was getting through the weeks. For four months, it was a marker of time, transition, and ultimately continuity.

I imagine that sometime soon, maybe in a year or two, I'll feel the urge and find the time to sit down with my mother to carry on this age old tradition.

This time, my son's eyes will watch us work.

As I painstakingly line up the henna on my fingers with a teaspoon I'll pause and notice that my mother doesn’t use one anymore.