When my oldest daughter was a baby, her hair grew in mohawk
fashion. Eventually I snipped the long front part, but there was nothing
I could do about the stubborn part on the left side. As she grew, her
hair turned curly, and it may seem like an exaggeration to say this
happened overnight, but she went to bed with straight her one evening,
and when she woke up the next morning, her head was full of street
urchin curls. By the time she was two and a half, her hair was a
gorgeous mess of tangled blonde snarls. Putting it up was frustrating,
her hair is fine so hair things slid out of it, and she liked to pull
out the ones that did anchor her hair well.
I was in the bathroom with her, various hair care products, a comb,
and a brush when it finally got to be too much. I was sick of trying to
comb out the matted knots of hair, she would cry every day when we had
to fix her hair, and it was suddenly no longer worth it even though I
really enjoyed seeing her with her hair done. I took a scissors to her
hair, and kept cutting until her hair framed her face. That summer she
had a
bright coral colored dress with a single large flower on the front. We
took her over to see my grandparents, and I have a great picture of her
sitting quietly on a child sized chair listening to my grandfather who
was slowing down while she was a bundle of youth filled energy.
My grandfather commented on how well her haircut had turned out. I
had cut hair before, but I was a relatively inexperienced stylist, and
it was dumb luck that her hair turned out as well as it had. My
grandfather is ninety now. He has trouble with his memory, and sometimes
can't articulate what he wants to say. He understands what you say to
him, and he smiles when we are humorous. It's hard to visit him, I don't
make the time like I should, and I'm going to make that a priority this
summer. His mother lived to be ninety-six, she had very long hair, but
it was always neatly coiled on top of her head, even in the nursing
home.
Hair is living art. The way that people sculpt it, wear it, color it,
remove it; the process fascinates me. My children have had streaks in
their hair before, my daughter put some pink in her hair the other day
after she found a can of colored hairspray, but I like it best when
she's laying in bed after a long day, totally worn out from her active
lifestyle, because that's when I can tuck it behind her ear, kiss her
cheek, and remember the first time she sat in front of the mirror,
gazing at herself without recognition or understanding, innocently trusting that
there was a method behind her mother's
scissor wielding madness.