The Hair

The second time my hair was lopped to an unflattering bob, it was because my mother was torturing me.

She would yank, and I would squirm and scream. “You’re hurting me!” “You’re whiny and ungrateful!” “I hate you!” This was a regular morning routine.

Little did I know that other children could find the act of hair-brushing to be pleasurable. Little did I know that it could be anything but a tugging match that made one’s eyes water. When I pulled a brush through unruly hair in high school, in front of friends, their eyes bugged.

“No, you start at the bottom to work out the tangles. Gently.” They said, a little shell-shocked, as if they’d just watch me put out a cigarette on my arm. “That way it doesn’t hurt.”

I took this in slowly. But I’d always yanked fiercely at my hair - it didn’t even really hurt any more. Perhaps I had killed all the nerve endings. Perhaps I’d grown used to the torture. Perhaps I was genetically resilient.

I thought of the mornings, and the yelling, and the tears, and suddenly it all made perfect sense.

When brushing through a terrible tat at the age of thirteen, and then again at sixteen, and once more at twenty-two, I found myself staring at a brush full of broken and disembodied hair, and then realized what I’d done. Feeling along my scalp, especially after the hair had sprouted back, I knew I’d created a bald patch (thankfully hidden deep inside my mane), and I knew that my high school friends had been right all along. Things didn’t have to be so hard.

But the first time my hair had been cut, it was me who was torturing my mother.

The single parent of a three and five year old, my mother had left us downstairs, playing nicely together, while she took a much needed nap. My brother and I, though not always friends, were doing well - he had a small car with self-spinning wheels and a battery pack, and it was occupying both of our attention.

Unfortunately, as we ran it along the carpeted stairs and I leaned down to get a better look, a wheel of the car sucked up a great chunk of my hair and I found myself stuck.

My brother, being five years old and wise in the ways of the world, knew just what to do to rescue me.

He went to the kitchen and emerged with the scissors and quickly freed me from the entrapping vehicle. I was grateful. And then he paused, glinting scissors in hand, and considered his accomplishment.

“Do you want me to cut off the whole thing?” He asked, regarding the rest of my mid-back, dark-blond hair.

“Okay!” I replied, agreeably. And so my brother, in my living room, crafted an almost-pixie cut.

Unable to contain ourselves, we bounded up the stairs to wake our mother.

“Look what we’ve done!” We cried, beaming, and our mother, groggy and terrified, did her best not to quash our enthusiasm.

“Oh, oh!” She cried, gulping, tears forming in her eyes. “Wow. Ivy. Don’t you look...pretty!”

Bless her - my brother and I never suspected a thing.

***

This post is dedicated to my tiny rat dog, Mustard, whose hair I attempted to trim last night. Things did not go according to my perfect plan, and now he is one fifth the size he was, and mangy, and, bless him, does not suspect a thing.