Hair Care and the Memories

Hugging through hair brushing!

Convincing my daughter to brush her hair is so much trouble, I often find myself letting her get her own way, and not brushing it. This only makes her hair 100 times worse to brush out when it is the tangled rat’s nest she so enjoys to fashion. Presently, I am brushing her hair daily, putting up with the tears because I am hopeful, as each day passes she will get more used to it, and enjoy it. I try my best to not pull on her tangles, and I brush her hair as gently as I would brush a really old persons hair, hair so fine it would pull from the scalp with a light tug.

I remember visiting my grandma shortly before she died. I was with my sisters and we were all chatting. My grandma was always a vibrant woman, but by the end of her life she was one foot out the door. She became confused, and not very good at communicating. She asked me to tweeze hairs from her chin, and I did it. I think I took the job too seriously, and went at it full speed ahead. I noticed her wincing in pain, but I figured it was a natural pain, like what I feel when I tweeze.

My sister told me to stop, and when I looked at my Grandma she had a terribly angry expression on her face, like she was ready to slap me. I am not sure if she wanted to tell me to stop, and couldn’t manage to do it, or if she forgot that she asked me to begin tweezing in the first place, but she was vehemently angry towards me, and I felt awful.

The last years of her life I was remember receiving a couple looks of disdain from her. Once we went out to a big family dinner the night before a funeral for my aunt who unexpectedly died. I was talking about a summer internship I was working on, and perhaps I sounded conceited, or trying to be overly impressive. I remember talking about how I felt fat (I know, at this point in my life, it was a stupid thing for me to say and not because I was much slimmer then I am currently) but I felt her eye roll and her amusement with the conversation extinguish. 

I don’t want these memories to have a strong impression on me because they make me feel like I had failed to be remarkable to her. She had 25 grandkids, so there really are only a few slots for the people who she considered to be kindred.

My life was rocky last year at this time, and I dreamt about her twice. In one dream, I was on a kayak and came up to the back of her house, which is on water, and I saw her sitting on the couch through the living room windows, her face was in her hands and she was crying. She came to the dock and looked young, her hair was beautiful and she was wearing a gorgeous dress. In the other dream, I was standing in my kitchen, trying to decide how much rice to make. I was staring at the back of the package and she came around the corner, and I just hugged her and started crying so hard into her shoulder. She was a very short woman, not even 5 foot, so my face came down into her shoulder like a child held in their mother’s arms. The dream was comforting maybe because I cried all the sadness that had built up in me. I woke up sobbing, and soaked from tears, but the hug from my grandma was as if she was saying, “everything is going to be ok.”

When my mom brushed my hair as a child it was always torturous. She would put my hair in a ponytail every day and I would complete the look by accessorizing it with a headband. I don’t remember ever recoiling in pain, or making a fit with tears and screaming, but I still recall the dissatisfaction I had with the job. I remember thinking, why can’t she figure out how to do a French braid? During a sick day, probably around 2^nd grade, my mom put my hair in curlers. As I looked in the mirror, bouncing a curl, my mom came in from behind and brushed the curls out. I didn’t want her to brush them out, but she told me it is how hair should be. Begrudgingly, my romantic Shirley Temple curls when to a poufy wavy fro, eighties hair.

I probably gave her a look similar to a look my grandma gave me, and let her carryon with the way she wanted to style my hair. And now, almost 30 years later, I think about why she wouldn’t style my hair the way I wanted her to.

She survived!