My hair and I...

...have had a love/hate relationship for almost 57 years.  My hair doesn't exactly love or hate me - inanimate objects don't have feelings - but the role it's played along my spiritual journey speaks volumes about my disdain or pleasure with my crowning glory.

I was born with no hair - an omen.  When it came in, judging from baby pictures, it was just peachy.  Blonde, wispy, and impossible to manage.  So my mother started trying to tame the beast.

The growing years - 3-12 - show the same look in every photo.  Long and curling on the ends.  Not because the hair wanted to curl - it came in stick-straight and has remained thus lo, these many years. 

No, Mom made me spend my youth in a torturous way, sleeping in curlers every night so that when I awoke she could brush my hair and the smallest of small waves would remain on the ends of my hair until I reached school.  Then: massive fail.

Washing my child-hair was also treacherous.  Leaning over a cold sink - topless because I hated water running down my clothes worse than I hated water running down my skinny back - I suffered through as my mother scrubbed my hair with Prell until there was no speck of any mere hint of dirt.  The woman loved clean.

After that came the real torture - combing through the wet, tangled morass that was my head covering.  Tears?  Every damned time.  Finally making it through the pain, I looked forward to the damned pink-sponge-roller-sleep I had to endure - anything was better than the combing out.

As I grew so did my opinions about my hair.  When I was twelve I declared hair independence - Mom would no longer be allowed to touch my hair, and I wanted it cut.  I got my wish and for a couple of years my bob and I were happy.  I washed it at night and slept, curler free, and awoke to straight hair that I pushed behind my ears.

Then the teens hit.  Suddenly, I wasn't as blonde as I had been.  Enter my new best friend, Sun-In.  Spray that on, sit in the sun, and instant highlights.  I loved, and I miss, Sun-In.  And those years.

The 60s hit in a big way my last couple of years in high school and the hair grew.  Long and straight.  Everyone wanted my hair.  Still blonde, thanks to my best friend, and straight?  Horse tails had nothing on my hair.  As my friends set their hair using orange juice cans or lay their hair across an ironing board and used an iron to try to achieve straight locks, mine was natural.  I did nothing to it but wash it and let it air dry.  I was envied and vilified for having perfect hair.

The summer before my senior year was traumatic - break up with boyfriend, falling out with best friend, basic high school drama.  So I did what any other normal 16 year old does, I cut my hair.  In all honesty, I missed the bob.  Easy?   Nothing to it.  I've kept the same hair since, with few alterations to style.

I think this screams something loudly about me.  What, I'm not sure, but I have to think my hair style remaining fixed speaks to my dislike for change, and the style itself says that I really am a no-nonsense type.  The upkeep involved in staying blonde?  My appreciation of all things past.  And the constantly pushing the hair behind my ears.  Don't mess with me.

Or maybe it's just hair.