hair

I was 5 when my older sister decided that she was going to grow her hair out.

I promptly asked my parents for my hair to be cut short. My mom took me to a hairdresser, one of the few times I remember ever going to one. I remember asking for it to be shorter, but my mom said, no, that was short enough. My dad said I looked like David Bowie.

[This story says a lot about Andrea's and my relationship.]

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When I was in high school, Andrea baby sat for a little girl who was 4 or 5 and whose hair had never been cut. Alyssa had the most beautiful long, golden, shining, perfect hair, and I decided that if I ever had a daughter, I, too, would not cut her hair. Maybe my daughter would have the long, beautiful, shining, perfect hair that I never had (I didn't care about the golden).

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Gwen didn't have any hair of any appreciable length until she was close to 2, and was around 2.5 before it was long enough for her first pony-tail. We did her first braid only a few weeks ago. She loves that her hair is growing out, and talks about when her hair will be long like mine. She sees my long hair as one of my defining characteristics.

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But.

Her hair has stubbornly refused to grow down and has instead concentrated on growing forward. I have tried ponytails (she tends to pull them out after not too long), we've tried barrettes (ditto, and they also slide straight out of her soft, fine hair...something I have all too much experience of on my own.) It gets in her eyes, and it bothers her, and when I mentioned a few days ago that it was possible to cut it, she started asking me if I would.

What matters more to me, clinging to a desire I've cultivated since I was a teenager? Or recognizing that it's her life, not mine, and while if she waited another year or two it might be long enough for brushing it to the side to keep it out of her eyes, that's two years, more than half a lifetime, of dealing with hair in her eyes.

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