We went today to get my daughter’s hair hacked off. Actually, to get it very professionally cut off by the stylist who does my and my husband’s hair. Usually I cut my kids’ hair myself. But this was one job I wasn’t willing to take on.
At one point, my daughter’s hair was approaching waist length. Then she wanted it shorter. Then she wanted bangs. Then she wanted it shorter. The last time I cut it, I cut it as short as I dared. According to her, it wasn’t short enough.
I know that this is my bugaboo, but I just love her hair. When I was a child, I had that stringy, not curly not straight hair I got from my German ancestors (and my mother, ha!). I hated it, and longed for long, gorgeous locks like some other girls I knew.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I was sure that he’d have dark, curly hair and brown eyes like my husband. Somehow, those Germans in our ancestry assert their recessive genes strongly: none of the children of my siblings whose other parent has brown eyes have brown eyes. They all have light eyes and light skin like a Wessling.
My son’s eyes were grey when he was born, and all the nurses who worked with him said, “Oh, that’s the color that Hispanic kids have when they’re born — his eyes will definitely go brown.” They very definitely went blue. And his hair, which was dark and curly at birth, all fell out and went blond and staight. So much for marrying a brown-eyed, curly-haired man!
But the thing both my kids did get from my husband is a lot more hair than I ever had. None of this fine, wispy stuff. Thick, full hair with light highlights. My daughter’s long hair went to golden curls down at the ends. Her medium-length hair lost the curl, but kept the golden streaks.
Now she has short hair. I showed her haircut photos on the web and she kept saying, “That one, that one” to the boys’ short haircuts. No bob or pixie for her. She wanted sensible, no nonsense, soccer girl hair!
I know I should be as OK with this as I am with my son’s insistence on having a long “tail” on the back of his head (which he has only allowed me to trim since he was 6). I know that I should be OK that my daughter, after years of wearing girly hand-me-downs from a cousin and a friend, has struck out on her own path by bringing the girly stuff to JellyBeanz and trading it in for tough, sporty clothing.
But losing the hair was hard to accept. She is happy as a lark without it, going around the house singing and tossing her new, light head. But I feel like the sisters in Little Women — “Oh, Jo, how could you? Your only beauty!” No, I don’t think it was my daughter’s only beauty, and I would never say this to her, but I loved that beautiful, thick, golden hair. I loved it most before she had bangs, when she was at her most difficult but for some reason, she allowed me to brush and braid her hair.
One morning we arrived at school and I was telling one of the staff how hard our morning had been. She nodded at my daughter’s elaborate hairdo and said, “It couldn’t have been so hard — that’s quite a hairdo.” I realized that hair-braiding time was a relaxing time for us then. It wasn’t until she had her independence in most other ways that my daughter started to fight me when I tried to brush her hair.
I know, the wise old woman says, hair grows. If she wants a buzz cut, if she wants to dye it jet black, all this can be remedied with time. But still, I did love that hair. And the feminist in me says, let it go. It doesn’t matter that people might think she’s a boy. It doesn’t matter whether her hair is pretty, as long as she is comfortable.
But the mother of a girly-girl in me has a secret comeback: at least she loves pink, tough clothing. And at least she has purple, rhinestone-embedded “princess” glasses.
In some ways, she’s still a girly-girl!
