Friday, February 19, 2010

Beauty draws us with a single hair


Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Tonight I officially decided that I would return to my roots.

After nearly a year with bangs, I realize that I need to grow them back in and reclaim Big Hair. Oh, my bangs are already way below my nose at this point, and they’ve never really been high maintenance. But as I ironed my tresses, I realized how much I missed the full length that I chopped off around my face and below my shoulders.

I had not had bangs in quite some time – a dozen years, perhaps – when I decided last spring that I was getting “too old” for really long hair. I blame it on the return of the whites. You see, my hair is heading full circle. I've watched it go from white-blonde as a child to yellow-blonde as a girl to dark-blonde as a woman and back to white as a dame. So I manned up, told my cousin to cut them off, just at the brow line, because old chicks need bangs... And thus she simply snipped.

It was tough to say, difficult to watch. Who wants to think they're becoming too old for anything? But what was worse occurred the next morning when I returned to school. I clearly remember hearing George, upon seeing my new ‘do, utter one word that immediately set the regret in motion:

“Xanadu.”

I could never wear the bangs down again, for fear that I was anything less than modish.

So I have spent the past 10 months pinning them back, cutting them myself (along with the rest of my hair). But tonight, while wearing my sci-fi heart monitor and getting a lot of ribbing about my new pager, I slowly pulled the iron and thought about how I am not too old, that there are women who are far younger than me on paper yet older in many others ways. I miss my long, beautiful, gleaming, steaming, flaxen, waxen hair.

I cannot wait for the morning when I will run again with a pinless pony as the winds run their hands through my blonde mane.

No comments: