Once in Her Life

Here are ten things I wrote about my hair life for the recent Backbone Storytelling event HAIR RAISING.

Backbone Storytelling is a live event where people drop their names in a hat to share personal stories. The events are themed around a part of the body.

The next event is 7 pm on Wednesday, November 16 in downtown Santa Barbara. Backbone is partnering with Wylde Works as a new venue. I hope to see you there and hear your story! The theme is Achilles’ Heel.

At least once in her life, a woman should be at peace with her hair. Not styling it, controlling it, changing it. Not dismissing it, abandoning it, or giving up on it in favor of a hat. Just being at peace with it. 

But is that the everyday reality? Noooooo.

#1. I was born bald. Most babies are, but pictures show I had barely a halo of soft brown hair by age five. I didn’t have a haircut until I was in grade school.

My mother told me my baldness really worried her, but it was the way she said it, “You were BALD.” I could hear the pearl-clutching horror of having a bald little girl.

#2. By age seven, my hair was long, brown, and straight. Think Cousin It from The Addams family. Sasquatch. Wolf Girl. Straight and plain was useful for ballet class torture buns.  Tuesdays and Thursdays my scalp was always sore. That was also the time I remember my mother leaving for work early, begging my father to help me brush my hair before he dropped us kids off at school, “so I didn’t go to school looking like that.”

#3. I loved curls. All pretty little girls had curls. But my mom was an incompetent hairdresser. Somehow, she survived her own curl and bob hair trauma of the fifties and sixties with no skills. She used to say the flower child hair of the hippie movement was a huge relief.

Despite this, she managed to make the Shirley Temple sausage curls required for me to be a gingersnap in the Nutcracker. 

My curls barely made it through the performance before becoming stringy and limp. The message I got from the mirror was clear: I was not a pretty little girl.

#4. By fifth grade, I had a hairdresser. My mom’s friend Richard had burned out as a licensed psychotherapist and decided to cut hair. Richard would shampoo my hair, which was a luxurious experience. Richard would ask questions, listen, and give good advice. I was young. I thought Richard was my best friend.

#5. In Jr. High, despite Richard’s advice, I cut my hair short and got an 80’s poodle perm. All those soft, bouncy curls every day. I LOVED IT. 

Until I didn’t. DEMON Frizzzzzzz. Grew that out and cut it off.

#6. When I was 16, I experimented with crimpers, curlers, and a hot curling brush, but I needed practice. “Hey, Moooom!” The brush got stuck in my mom’s hair. With sharp, shining scissors, THIS CLOSE to my mother’s scalp, face, and eyeballs, I cut the snarled brush out. 

I suspect that bald spot is yet another reason why my mom didn’t include me in her will. 

Also in high school, Richard taught me how to hang upside down and use a wet washcloth to create beachy waves in my hair. It was another moment of hair love, followed by one of hair horror: Richard counseled me that it was time to start coloring my greys. At age 18.

#7. In college, my housemates taught me about product. It worked, but it took time and smelled. Even scents that seemed nice at first, hurt my sinuses and caused a headache after a while. 

Was I slowly being poisoned by the blonde cheerleader types?  Did they want to get their manicures on my 19th Century Russian Lit notes? 

I grew my hair long again so it was easier to keep out of the way. Richard went back to his true calling. I met a new stylist named Julie. She did my maid of honor hair for a friend’s wedding. Julie was an artist. An updo queen.

#8. After graduation, I was living in Mountain View, CA, and learned to wash and mummify my hair overnight. Sleeping with a towel around my head wasn’t always restful, but sacrifices had to be made. In the morning, I unwrapped the wavy waterfall of perfect shiny hair from Pantene commercials. 

After 26 years, I was completely at peace with my hair.

#9. My hair was really too long for a silicon valley professional, but I met a man who thought it was beautiful. So I married him. Julie did my wedding hair. Richard did my mom’s.

For years, occasionally Mark and I would drive to Santa Cruz together for cuts and colors from Julie. My husband looks amazing with comic book hair color: Platinum blonde, carrot orange, or Superman blue-black.

All those years I wrote letters to Richard, visited him, and loved him…until he ghosted me. My mom went to see him. He was sick with cancer. Angry, private, and fading away far too young. I found out that he had died by reading his obituary.

#10. My grey hair is waaaay curlier. It’s shorter than when I got married. More grey means I sometimes look in the mirror and see dead people: I look like my grandmother, my mother, or on really bad hair days, my father. 

I’ve been experimenting with a bowl of water curling technique. It works. I have unscented organic hair products. I’m mostly at peace with my hair again. 

But I do have to do it all myself because Julie has disappeared. Every month or so I leave a voicemail. Send a text. Write an email. 

It’s a happy ending:
I’m not bald.
Most days I have curls.
My hair is OK. 

I worry that Julie isn’t.