Yesterday I stood in front of the bathroom mirror holding a fistful of my hair out from my head and my giant sewing scissors. Frozen like a statue.
For close to a half an hour.
I just stood there, thinking.
My hair has an identity all its own. It's been long and very pale blonde with ribbons of darker ash and lighter white forever. The color of my hair matches my children's hair and my husband's too. We're a set of four. A blinding, vaguely Nordic, fully Irish flaxen presence, a towhead force to be reckoned with. It was stick straight forever until I let it grow with abandon and then it grew into crazy gentle waves and tendrils. It's called my crown, literally. Mermaid hair, princess hair, hair people covet so desperately they buy it in dyes and extensions and straighteners or they come up to me and ask me where I got it.
My hair drives me crazy sometimes. It's a love/hate thing. I go through a bottle of conditioner a week. It gets singed at the stove, it goes down the drain if I lean over the sink, Jacob is always pulling long strands from his beard, and off his coat. I tuck it into my jeans by mistake and get it caught in buttons and car doors. He sits on my hair without thinking, sometimes he lies on it, he's pulled out locks in his sleep because he's tangled in it. I veer violently from looking angelic to being Medusa. And yet it's comfort. I rarely wear it up anymore. Henry used to hold it when I fed him. Jacob holds it or touches it constantly, which I relish. And people stare at me and I admit I like that. It's been this way since I was around four years old. I'm possibly dumb enough to enjoy that kind of attention and admit it willingly.
But a small part of me would sometimes love to chop it all off and dye it bright red and be different just for a little while, not forever. Have it stick out all over in cute little turned-up points and become a smoldering firecracker, a ginger-flavored spicy pixie, instead of a vanilla lemon-drop princess. Why? Just to be different looking. Redheads are gorgeous creatures. I was born with bright orange hair which fell out within two weeks and then grew back in fuzzy and yellow and glowing. I've always identified with redheads. They get stared at a lot too.
Then slowly my common sense began to return in a trickle, because even if I say I hate my hair, I don't. I love it, unapologetically. But I didn't put the scissors down right away.
Jacob found me still standing there. When he saw the scissors he dropped his favorite coffee mug on the floor and it shattered into so many pieces I may spend the entire winter fishing shards out from between the hardwood boards.
Princess, what are you doing?
I'm thinking, Jacob.
Are you thinking about cutting it?
Yes.
Can I ask a big favor?
Sure.
Put the scissors down. Please don't change your hair.
I'm not. I'm just thinking about it.
You're thinking if you change your physical appearance enough you've have a clean slate, maybe feel different?
Something like that, maybe.
It doesn't work that way, princess. A big change can be symbolic but in the end life still picks up where you last bookmarked it. Altering your appearance won't change that.
I know. Somehow I know.
Bridget, I really love your hair the way it is right now. Call it a guy thing or a fetish if you must, just don't change it.
I just stared at him without responding. He had shaved his beard off early yesterday morning, sending his seventies sideburns and tickly mustache with it. Now he's baby-faced again, clean-cut if you ignore the shaggy blonde hair that he hasn't had cut since possibly June. He couldn't put any logic around his own minor treachery. He can shave off his beard and I almost cried but I can't cut my hair that he loves? Um, what?
I left the mirror and returned the scissors to my sewing basket.
Within an hour I was overwhelmingly glad I hadn't cut my hair. I'm sure relief is always more welcome than regret. I didn't think we were both so shallow but it runs deeper than that and I can't explain it. I guess when you have a trademark like the one I do, being easily recognized for my hair, my brand, an identity tied to a physical characteristic, you shouldn't fuck with it. A package deal. I'm not a superstar, therefore I don't need to try to reinvent myself.
My other remarkable characteristics that are shared by few constitute my lack of height, my color-changing eyes and the sacral dimple that always seems to be a fun surprise to my lovers. I can't change those either, and I wouldn't even if I could.
Okay maybe I would lose the dimple. I find it kind of an oddity. Like maybe I was meant to be a bowling ball with three holes but at the last minute, through a cruel twist of evolution, I turned into a human female. Sorry, that sounds really yuck but I'm laughing anyway. Or maybe it was a tail and I would have been a little more popular on the freak circuit but it just wasn't in the cards for me.
Made in the image of a Blythe doll with the freaky eyes, but anatomically correct, and real. A living mermaid doll.
And yes, I'm tired today. Too tired to write anything important. I need a bath. I have to wash my hair. I need to get started on the the ten loads of laundry we created over the weekend. So you get a two-page ramble about my hair.
Feel fortunate, I could have posted a two-page ramble about sex.
I still might.
