Hair today, gone tomorrow

I’m excited about tomorrow.

Incidentally, do people say that in Britain? I have a vague recollection that when I first arrived here, I thought it was odd that people said they were excited about things. Grown-ups, I mean. Of course it’s ok for children to be excited, or we might put it in the passive and say something like “tomorrow is an exciting day”, but I have a feeling we don’t actually confess to such an unruly emotion ourselves. But I can’t really remember. I’ve been away too long.

Any old way, I AM excited about tomorrow. I’m having my hair done. ‘Done’, you note, not ‘cut’. There isn’t enough of it to cut anything off (so the title of this post is a little misleading). I do now have more than Obama, but we’re not talking Charlie’s Angels. ‘Styled’ might be a nicer word. Yes, I’m going to have my hair styled.

I was warned that it might grow back different to how it used to be, and it did. I’ve found that strangely upsetting. Symbolic, somehow, that life can return to normal, but it’s not the same normal as it was before. My hair wasn't exactly my finest feature how it was, all thin and wispy, but it was MINE and it was ME, and I’d spent a few decades getting to know how we worked together. Now I have the kind of hair that I used to envy in the 1980’s, when I used inordinate amounts of mousse in an attempt to give myself what was called ‘volume’, a word which translated into 'looking like you have a pineapple on your head'. Well, now I grow that volume all by myself. It takes a bit of getting used to.

When I last wrote about my hair, I was just past the very first sleek Obama stage, and I felt I had a doormat on my head, all coarse and wiry. Not nice. I urged it to keep growing, and it seemed to be getting a bit softer and bouncier with length. And then all of a sudden, I had this huge mop on top, and I felt like a walking bunch of carrots. I’d previously thought I could maybe go for a pixie Amelie gamine boy-cut sort of a look, but I can see there’s no point in that, unless I want to head back to the hairdresser every couple of weeks. The window of time between flat doormat and bouffant bunch of carrots is tiny. Is this what you wiry-haired people have to put up with? Blimey, I wish I’d known. I’d have cut you more slack. That’s a big life pressure you operate under. We wispy types have a more carefree existence. We can go for weeks with a look that is vaguely shaggy but still tolerable. Managing the mop is going to be a learning process, I can see.

I have no idea what will happen as it continues to grow. Will it flop over sideways at some point? Or will it just carry on growing onwards, upwards, and outwards, so that I look like an illustration warning children to keep away from dangerous electric equipment?

Then there’s the colour. Or lack of it. It’s not unpleasant in an unsettling way. I mean, people wouldn’t actually vomit in the street as I walk by. But, it is very black and grey, and severe. So I’m going to get some colour put in. But that’s a bit of a learning curve too. I’ve never had colour professionally done. I’m thinking this could be the beginning of an expensive journey. Don’t you have to have it redone every 6 weeks, if you don’t want your roots to show? Could I maybe have something a little more subtle done? High lights? Low lights? Back lights? Head lights? I’m planning on discussing all this with a nice cosmetologist who’s been recommended to me (my old one has moved to Connecticut, just when I need her). It's a dangerous strategy, to go along without clear views in my own mind of what I want, and I will quite possibly get talked into having all kinds of glamorous and expensive things done, but I don’t quite know how else to go about getting my first lesson in mop management.

I won’t miss the hats. I’ve enjoyed wearing them, but they’re getting a little hot, now that the temperatures here are in the 70s. And I never wore the wig, so I’ll take that back to the cancer charity (though I do have a very cute photo of 9-yo modeling it).

I never took a photo of me with no hair, or with baby-soft stubble just beginning to grow, or even with my Obama cropped doormat look. I felt so horrid, and I didn’t want it recorded for posterity. But now I wish I had. I don’t know why, really. I was still me, underneath it all, and perhaps I’d like to be able to look back and see that. On the subject of photos, the other day I had to get my passport out (oh yes, for the voting registration form), and the picture of me in it was all wisps and tendrils. I love that word. Tendrils. It made me sad, to see my old tendrils.

But enough with the gloomy looking back! I am now only a few hours away from a new look, and even though I guard my anonymity, I might have to find a clever way of showing you all. I’ll tell you one thing. It’s much nicer to be going under the scissors (for there will surely be some snipping, short though my hair may be) than under the knife. And I confess I AM excited, very excited. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to be able to get to sleep.