Understand that I did, in fact, have hair growing up. I’m fortunate enough to say that I still have it. I say fortunate because given the torture and trauma I made my pre-pubescent and adolescent hair endure, it’s a freakin’ bloody miracle.

Interestingly, I have waves in my hair now. Perhaps a bi-product of having kids. I dunno, but I actually don’t mind my hair most days. Not to gross anybody out, but as my hair gets dirtier… greasier… the better it gets. I kid you not. Certainly, it reaches a point where it starts heading in the other direction. From full and wavy to dull, drab and limp. It’s not thick and it’s fine. So it can only take so much dirtiness… greasiness… before it just looks bad. There is a fine balance after all. I know, I’ve grossed you out.

In the early years, my fine, delicate strands and tendrils endured repeated assaults: home perm after home perm, striving for the perfect ringlets shown on the front of the box. So easily duped. Of course the model with the perfectly formed spirals had been primped, preened, rolled, curled, blown… only God, Allah and Oprah really know what else… deceiving young, desperate pre-teens into begging their well-meaning mothers into buying this toxic crap and voluntarily infusing it deep into their scalps. Scalding… burning… and by and large, frying their young heads. Oh yes… and my mother?!? Oh right, due to her own never-ending struggle with fine, staight hair she was indulging the desperate quest for TeenBeat beauty of misguided pre-teen, and actually rolling fine, delicate tendrils onto narrow plastic rollers! Infusing young scalp. Just as her own well-meaning mother, with her own beauty baggage, had done for her. Ack!

I’m not placing blame. I know I was desperately… frantically obnoxious in my insistence for curly hair. Despite each. And every. Fucking time. Ending up with a head full of crispy frizz! But, surely the next time would be different. Some how. And for a period of about seven years, there was always a next time. Thankfully, though, at some point, once I could afford it, I employed the (relatively) knowledgeable assistance of local salon. Marginally less destructive. Equally ineffectual.

The odyssey that was my perpetual search for the perfect curl for my so-very-imperfect hair did finally come to an end. Overlapping with my need to reclaim my inner blond. A saga commonly referred to as: My Journey Into Sun-In. Painful fodder for another post. One hair trauma at a time….

Well, I am now a mother. Of a daughter. Who, without a doubt, and despite my best efforts, will likely be dissatisfied with her own hair. But, honestly, and not because I am this girl’s mother, the child has beautiful hair. It’s fine, yes. But she has more of it. She also has delicious, wonderful waves. Even when it’s messy, unbrushed, tatty and tangly- much of the time- it’s lovely. And I love it. Each and every delicate, little ringlet.

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