H is for Horrible Hairstyle

Hair is important to me. If you're a woman reading this, you're probably saying, "It's important to me, too! Isn't it important to every woman?" My husband says it's way too important to me. Our youngest son says, "Yeah, anyway, it's just dead cells, Mom!" (This from the child whose idea of brushing his hair means slapping water on it and pasting it down with his hands.)

I've been scrolling through my mind, trying to remember all the hairstyles I've had, for better or for worse. I will share the worst haircut ever. I wish I could say it when I was a kid ,but it wasn't. I was 23 years old. I had a 13-month old son, and a 3-week-old daughter. That's right. Two babies in 13 months. I felt homely, haggard, and housebound, and desperate for change. Post-partum depression was starting to take a deep hold on me. There was not much I felt in control of--not my anger, not my tears, not my children's digestion.

Only two things could I change easily--diapers and my hair. With a friend's graduation-from-law-school party coming up on Memorial Day weekend, I went for my cut on payday--May 15th. Money was tight, but I knew if I went to the Hair Cuttery, they'd ask me what I wanted and I'd walk out with the same-old, same-old. I wanted someone with professional and creative experience to tell me what would look good, not me plop down and tell them what I thought.

So I went to a "real" salon (read: expensive). The receptionist asked who I wanted, and I said it didn't matter, I was new here. So I got assigned one. It was the first time I'd ever had a male stylist.

He ran his fingers through my wavy, brown, shapeless hair, lifting and tossing and massaging and all those things that make you say, "I don't care what else you do, just more of that, please!" He said all the right things in his exuberant, flamboyant way to the hermit housewife in his chair. "You've got great texture and color. I just think if I do this, this, and this, it'll give you more volume, accent your eyes, and really make people take notice!" Then he proceeded to snip. And snip. And snip.

He cut out every last semblance of curl and femininity I possessed on my head. He parted the hair on the side, tapered it in back, cut out the ears, and then spun me around to look in the mirror.

"What do you think?" he asked, obviously proud of his art. I took one look and gulped. I ran my fingers through the top--the only place with much hair left--and gasped to myself I was too polite to tell him how I really felt. How could I have given him carte blanche! It's horrible! I look so....butch! What will Paul say? Nauseated and fighting back tears, I handed over precious money in a sum I had never forked over for a cut. It felt like a double whammy, having paid with hair first!

Well, Paul's reaction was worse than I expected. He really didn't get verbal about it. He did say, "Kind of short, isn't it?" For the next five weeks, he didn't touch my head. Before that, I had grown so accustomed to his gentle stroking of it at night that the abrupt absence of "hair affection" made me pick up his hand and place it behind my head. He quickly pulled back. I asked what was wrong. He then answered in words I only remember in staccato, "'sorry...can't...touch...stubble." I rolled over and just let the tears flow. And flow. And flow. He felt horrible, but it was an honest moment that I've never forgotten. I had let a total stranger have his way with my hair, and now my own soulmate couldn't even touch it.

Never again, I vowed. Never again will I give free rein to someone with scissors.