Hair
Some were pink and squishy. Others were made of wire and bristles and you held them in place with little pink plastic sticks. I once even had some that were soft rubber domes, pink again, that folded over on themselves.
The hair-dos of my late elementary and junior high days required setting, with rollers and papers and nets. And somehow I managed to sleep on those prickly, bristly curlers. It would be worth it the next morning when I combed out my ‘do into a rather bizarre shape with a bulge on either side of the middle part and sharp ridges along the sides. This odd configuration was fixed in place with a generous spray of Aqua Net, and throughout the day, my hands would find their way up to shape the ridges back into the edge that style required. Heaven forbid there would be wind.
I grew my hair out long in high school, parted in the middle of course, like the folk singers with their guitars and peasant dresses and soft moccasins. So now all of those roller options were far too small in diameter to achieve the smooth and silky look I was after.
So I rolled my wet hair up in cardboard Minute Maid orange juice cans. But even those weren’t fat enough, so I pierced Campbell’s soup cans with an awl and used those. This solution had a couple of flaws. First, the cans weren’t porous enough so my hair never completely dried. And I had to sleep on my face because no way could I lay my head down on soup cans.
I was reluctant to iron my hair as some of my friends did. Yet I couldn’t shake the notion that long hair had to be stick straight and shiny.
Several years later, I took advantage of a free haircut as a “hair model” at the Vidal Sassoon salon in San Francisco. The poor stylist-in-training kept apologizing because she couldn’t get rid of all my waves. I’m sure her failure to achieve the Sassoon look was utterly demoralizing for her. But I cared not. My hair had passed my waist at some point, and, in my hippie way, I had long ago relinquished any notions of styling. I just wanted the free trim to get rid of my split ends. Remember split ends?
When I began to teach TM, in an effort to appear more professional and more mature, I finally cut my hair into a standard, blow-dried bob. In my early thirties, it started to turn gray, passing through some glorious combinations of blonde and brown and silver. Now that it is completely gray and white, the texture has changed completely, and my hair is fine and thin and flyaway.
As most of us have, I tried a variety lengths and styles over the years. What a relief when I finally realized, once again, that I could just let my hair be itself, just like I’m trying to do. It is quite curly after I wash it, but after a couple of days the curls fall and only waves remain. If it’s damp out, it’s all frizz. And so be it. I am who I am every day. And that might be different today than yesterday. Sometimes more contracted. Sometimes more open and free. If my hair can do it, so can I.
