My Hair

My hair is perfectly straight without an ounce of body, wave, or curl. You would think perfectly straight hair would be easy to manage but you'd be sadly mistaken. My hair is a stringy mop, a lazy beast with a mind of its own.

My hair like to hang. Except when I put it up, then it likes to escape in little wisps which invade my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. It clings uncomfortably to my neck and tickles my back. It refuses to lay smooth, preferring to part like the red sea down the middle of the head and when I blush the part blushes too, like a thermometer showing rising heat.

You might be wondering why I don't just cut off and be done. I had short hair as a child. My mother couldn't do anything with my hair either. She tried braiding, pony tails, barrettes, ribbons, and I don't know what all else. None of it worked. My hair is ultra fine. It simply does not hold a style for very long and is resistant to the stiffest of styling products. My mother would labor over my head for an hour and when we got wherever we were going I looked like a dingy mop. Practicality prevailed. She cut it.

Then the problem was I looked like a boy. Every time someone called me a boy, I would cry. Every time she took my to the salon, I would beg her not to cut my hair. My mother would say,"'But your face is so feminine! I don't see how anyone could mistake you for a boy!"  But mistake me they did and I would cry like the girl I didn't appear to be. This went on until I was physically able to resist a haircut. Then my father stepped in and said I could have my hair anyway I wanted it as long as I kept it neat and brushed.

You know those vain girls in high school who brush their hair all the time? That was me. Except my hair was awful looking.

I had long hair from the fifth grade on. I let it grow and grow and grow. By the time I was in my twenties, it reached past my waist.

I still couldn't do anything with it. So I stopped fighting it. I remember reading an article about Jackie Kennedy, about how she is not remembered in pillbox hats and suits, looking constrained, but is best remembered standing on her yacht, her hair tossed by ocean breezes. That idea struck a cord with me. I couldn't articulate it then, but I like the idea of hair as a symbol of wildness, of untamed female power. I was becoming a witch before I knew what witches were.

I stopped trying to smooth every hair in place. I clipped up and let that be it. Sometimes it fell artfully and sometimes it was still a mop. But it was beautiful. Part of what attracted Kevin to me was my hair. Every day I had my hair up and before I left I'd let it fall down my back in a cascade of coppery brown. Every day he followed me out the door, trying his best to talk to me.

Then one day, Kevin made me angry. I have never been so angry in all my life. A wisp of hair wrapped around the nape of my neck and I shouted, "That's it! I'm changing EVERYTHING!" I cut twelve inches off hair, looked in the mirror and cut a few more inches. When I had it to to shoulder length, I was done.

Right before I went into a diabetic coma, my hair began to fall out. I was in town one evening and I saw an old woman, who, for all intents and purposes, was bald. She had a little bit of thin hair teased all around her head, but you could plainly see her skull. She might have well been chrome-dome bald. Immediately I felt aching pity for her- she probably spent hours each day teasing her small bit of hair, gluing it in place with a gallon of hair spray, hating to look in the mirror, but needing to see how to fix her hair...and then she put on a brave face and went out in public, head held high, not a hair out of place like she was still young attractive, and not the least bald. I felt sorry for her, but I knew I didn't want to be her. I decided if I went bald I was buying a fucking wig. I went to the pharmacy to buy hair vitamins. They didn't do a damn bit of good.

Next I woke up in ICU and I didn't care about my hair or anything else for that matter. The worst part of the hospital stay was the nurses not letting me shower. I got sponge baths and dry shampoo. My hair was truly a mop then, a limp, greasy, stringy mess. I finally got moved to a private room and the day before I was released I was allowed to take a shower. I washed my hair three times.

After getting out of the hospital, I was too tired to brush my hair. I still had IV marks. Lifting up my arms made them ache miserably. My mother brushed my hair for me. I almost cried when I told her I wanted to cut my hair.

In a strange quirk of fate, the stylist and I kept missing each other. We played telephone tag. Eventually, life started returning to normal, or as normal as it can be after a diabetes diagnosis. A week after being released, I was sitting in my doctor's office asking about my poor, thinning hair. She told me my sugar had been so high nutrients couldn't get to my hair and that's why it start falling out. She assured me it would grown back when my sugar was under control.

And it did. I'm really glad I didn't cut it. It's still a bit past my shoulders, but it's the right thickness. Or as thick as my fine hair can be. Maybe I'll let it grow to my waist again. Maybe. I'm not mad anymore.

I have a new problem now- gray. Or more accurately, silver hair. I am 34 and gray comes early in my family so I've been pretty lucky. My poor aunt started going gray when she was just 16. I really shouldn't complain too much. It's just that the silver hair is unlike the rest of my hair. Gray hair is actually caused by air surrounding the hair shaft, making the hair appear lighter in color. Gray headed people are air heads. Really. I am not making this up. It would be unwise, however, to call them that. Because the hair is made thicker by the air, it won't lay flat. Not that my hair as ever lain the way it is supposed to. My silver hair stands up, waves, and shouts 'HERE I AM! LOOK AT ME! LOOK, LOOK, LOOK!'

I suppose I shouldn't complain too much about the color either. After all, my hair has its own mind and it can't decide on a color. I said earlier it was coppery brown. It is. Most of the time. I have three pictures of me, all taken minutes apart when I was 17. In one picture I have brown hair. In the next, I have blond hair. In the last, I have red hair. My hair is an unusual shade until I want someone to notice the color, then it is a flat, dull, unimaginative brown. I was a blond child. Sometimes I think about dying it. I've heard you can't go wrong with your baby color. But if it could go wrong, my hair would find a way to do it.

Every day I pull my hair into a ponytail, slap on my plain black cap and head to my welding job where the sparks fly everywhere. One day sparks landed in my hair. The lady next to me checked for burns, running her fingers through my ponytail. I had the overwhelming urge to bite her hand. I don't let people touch my hair. It is next to impossible to accept kindness about a subject I've been battling my entire life.

Today my hair has not seen much of the brush. What was supposed to be romantic and fun was ruined by miscommunication. Angry, I left the house just to get away, my hair limply hanging down my shoulders. It has been plastered to my head by wind, drizzling rain, and humidity. If you need a better visual, think of the Goddess Sedna at the bottom of the sea, her mangled hands unable to brush her hair. Think of Sedna becoming angry, the waves churning and rocking, her long, black hair wrapping around her head in a tangled mass of frustrated ire. That's me today, my hair as wild as my mood.

What can I say? I look like what I am- a witch. A witch with a mop of stringy hair, the forces of sun and moon and earth moving around her, through her, being her, the wind howling, the cauldron churning. You can't brush all that wild woman energy into place. Let the cauldron boil and bubble, toil and double. Let me run my fingers through my wild hair, I am the Witch of This Place, unyielding and unafraid, bold and reckless, a force to be reckoned with.