Hair Today-Gone Tomorrow

Stages of hair over the years

Sometime in the 80's

1/23/2010

My friend Val can tell you that I have been on a quest since the 80's to have peace with my hair.

My hair is thick. It has unruly cowlicks that make it really hard to work with. It doesn't have enough natural wave to just "wash & wear" it. It has to be dried & either curled with a curling iron (I can't even remember the last time I did this) or flat-ironed.

My hair has been big (80's big), it has been short ("man short"), and it has had many periods of in between the "man short" and "I am growing it out". It has been shades of red, blond, & dirty blond (as my kids now call it). Now I am facing what to do with the gray that is becoming more & more prominent throughout the dirty blond.

As I sit here and write this blog my hair is causing me to feel guilt. I should be thinking about & praying for the people in Haiti instead of blogging about my hair. I should be folding the laundry and doing the dishes instead of blogging about my hair. I should be grading math tests & essays about asteroids, meteroids, and comets. But here I sit-a shallow, peaceless person blogging about hair.

I blame today's revisiting of the constant search for hair "peace" on my visiting teacher. She is a lovely lady, but she did something that has stirred this whole peace pot up again. She cut her hair. It is not "man short", but she went from a "I'm growing it out" stage to "I have three kids and I can't mess with longer hair" stage and her hair looks pretty darn good. So good, in fact, that her hair has been the object of my obsession for the past 2 weeks.

To cut or not to cut? That has been the question. I have been in one of those "I'm growing it out" stages for the past couple of years. I have gone from "man short" to completely growing out my bangs and actually having almost enough hair for a pony tail. What have I learned??? Having longer hair is not all that it is cracked up to be.

So, yesterday I went to get my hair "trimmed". My hair lady has been cutting my hair since we moved to Bountiful 10 years ago. She knows about the cowlicks. She has been with me from "man short" to "I am growing it out" and back to "man short" many times. So, it is not unusual for her to ask me each time I go for a haircut "So, what are we doing with your hair today?" She asked this question yesterday, and without even thinking twice I told her to go "man short"-again. She convinced me to only cut about 3 inches off. She said, "It is easier to cut a little more off than it is to put it back on!"

It is a lovely cut, but I still don't feel the peace...