Crazy Hair

I made a nice half-day of it. I kissed Beatrice and Sam good-bye, headed out the door. It was three hours before my quickly made hair appointment, so I filled the car with gas, hit the container store for some much needed containers, ran an errand or two about town, then drove into the city. I parked in my old neighborhood and just wandered, reliving the memories of my pre-Bea and Lucy life. Sam and I used to ride our bikes this way to work. There is the sagging porch on our old apartment where we used to drink many wines, which incidentally was the only redeeming quality of the apartment. Well, that and the cheap ass rent. There is the fabric store I had to pay rent in every month. I roamed small handmade boutiques and new vintage stores, and ate lunch at Philly's oldest natural food grocer/restaurant (Yep, still bland and tasteless, but healthy--how I have missed you.)

Still, I had this nauseated, excited, conspiratorial feeling about me. I was hacking off all of my hair in a matter of minutes. And as I passed young grungy anarchist kids with their choppy dos and one pant leg rolled up, I stared at their hair. I want that, only less...mental patient-y. I don't want to look middle-aged, and yet I do not want to look like an aging punk rocker. Or someone grasping at a lost youth. I am rejecting the soccer mom bob at this moment, but am I embracing experimental Japanese pop artist?

I like the salon. It is the only organic salon in Philadelphia, or so they say. The stylists are young and nice with very cool haircuts. Haircuts that are much cooler than I could work at age 35. Most of them aren't exactly the mullet I grew up with in Hickville, Pennsylvania, but sort of squint your eyes, and back up, and yes, one of them could be driving a Camaro. The cut should really be called the Ironic Mullet. Still, I love Tegan and Sara, and if my husband hadn't just warned me against the Tegan and/or Sara cut, it would have happened.

No one batted an eye when I walked in. They smiled and led me to the random stylist assigned to me. Holy schnickeys, she was very pregnant. "Woah, boy." I breathed deeply. I thought, "This is all about the hairs, Baby. Not about the babies, Hair." Still, I had somehow managed to sort of live in this world before my loss for a few hours. A respite from grief and loss. Reminiscing about a time in my relationship with my husband when it was all future. Imaging a haircut that represented who I was before the babies. And here I was facing me three years ago.

"So, what are you thinking today?" She pulled out my itty bitty paintbrush ponytails, and fluffed my gigantically puffy mushroom head, smiled at me in the mirror.  And I had an impulse to begin therapy, but I knew what she meant.
"I want it all off. I mean, scalped. I can't stand this anymore." And I gave her the hair de-evolution story, and told her that I want it short, really short. And she pointed out that it is quite short already. "Well," I said, "Pixie-ish, but cool."
"Ah, okay, so let's look through a magazine for some cuts." And we did. We paged through a magazine with absolutely no pictures of women with short hair. Finally, I just said, "Alright, I just want something short, that doesn't get into my face. Think Katharine Moening in the L-Word. Think Joan Jett. Think Ellen. Cool and androgynous. A little shaggy, but not in my face."
"Alright, let's do it! YAY, I love cutting hair. I mean, when someone just wants it all off, and not just a little off the end."

As the funkified shampoo girl massaged my head, I closed my eyes and remembered the days after I left my ex-husband. I cut off all my hair. And at the time, the stylist said, "Ah, the divorce do." And she explained how people in transitional times in their life, traumatic and sad times, let go of their old life by letting go of their hair. She said it was an important, cathartic, healing ritual. And as this shampoo girl chatted about this and that, I felt a kind of lightness of being. All of this. All of this crap, I am letting go of it. I am going to leave it on the floor of the salon for other people to clean. My grey hairs and my mangled hairs, the hairs that watched Lucy be born, the ones that hid my face in the depth of my grief, the ones I plaited like I imagined folding my dark haired baby's hair one day into long braids, the hairs that poked my husband's face as we held each other sobbing, the hairs the looked sad and drab, the hairs that matted onto my face as I howled into my pillow, the hairs that made me feel fat and useless...all of them. Transition. I am in transition.

Of course, the stylist asked about my pregnancy and I about hers. Her belly kept bumping my back when she cut, which sent a jolt of intimacy through my body. But you know, it was okay. She was 36 weeks, and about to birth her first child. I just didn't tell her about Lucy. I couldn't, you know, break her heart and scare the bejeebus out of her in the same moment, but more importantly, I didn't feel a need to talk about Lucy. She never asked me how many children I had, so we talked about Beatrice and this new baby as they came up. If she has asked me that question, which seems to mostly be the first question out of everyone's mouth, I would have answered two children with a third on the way. We just talked as it came up, which is exactly what I want in a talking partner right now. Usually haircuts feel like an interview. The stylist asks you a list of standard questions, nodding and giving her opinion like some kind of Dime Store guru. But for an early twenties stylist, she was unusally wise in her listening and reflecting. She told me the awesomeness that was her name choices (CASH for goodness sake). There was no arrogant pregnant lady posturing. She just laughed and asked and shared and was really quite kind.

By the time I realized it, I had no hair. And I giggled nervously. It wasn't the shaggy sort of funkiness I imagined in my mind's eye, but it was man-ish and pixie-ish, and I can only hope that my burgeoning bump sort of cancels out the masculine qualities of the haircut. I mean, never do you look as feminine as when you are pregnant, so I go with the supposition that it means I can have a haircut that is more, you know, man-like. I cockily sauntered out into the street. I felt some of my lost bravado. The shampoo girl was walking back from lunch. "WOW! You look awesome." There is nothing like hearing that from a twenty year old punk rocker to make your day.

It's been fun to have short hair again. At ten in the morning, I sort of realize that I haven't even looked in a mirror to evaluate the state of my head, or said one tiny bitch about "this fucking hair," or heard my daughter say the words "You have crazy hair*, Mami" once, or used fifteen bobby pins, two rubber bands, a headband and superglue to keep my hair from stabbing my eyeball. I feel faster, lighter, more streamlined, in all aspects of my being.

*for the mamas out there looking for a fun book, we just got this one out of the library to recognize my insane hair situation called Crazy Hair by Neil Gaiman. Really fun and funny for Bea.