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It's Just Hair

I never appreciated my hair. Dirt brown in color, it was thick, but fine—straight, but it frizzed in humidity.  I spent most of my adolescence trying to beat it into submission through overly regular home perms and the occasional shearing to remove the resulting damage.

Added to my misery was the fact that I was woefully inept at styling. Curling irons, flat irons, hot rollers—none of them worked in my hands. Insertion of a ponytail holder was really the only option I’d mastered.

I wavered between short and shoulder length for much of my early adulthood, growing it out only to cut it all off again. I was a regular in the hair coloring aisle and—for a brief period of poor investments just prior to marriage—in the chair of a high-end salon to maintain the burnt sienna shade I’d come to favor.

I decided in my thirties that highlights and layers would be the best way to add movement and interest to my limp locks. This bold move resulted ever-lightening brassy streaks that illuminated an unfortunate S-curve on the back of my head. My hair was a vexing and perpetual source of angst.

And then I lost it to chemo. The oncologist warned me that my hair would fall out, so I cut it into a layered bob in anticipation. When the first clump fell, I was more fascinated than upset.

I did not shed a single tear when the stylist set the razor to a quarter inch and buzzed off the remains of my suddenly dead locks. Even when that crew cut thinned to a handful of strays, I maintained my equilibrium.

I cheerfully put on my bandannas—usually with big earrings to prove that I was still a girl—because I knew the fundamental rule of hair: it grows. I heard tales of women whose hair came back entirely gray, or wildly curly, or somehow vastly different from its original form, but I wasn’t worried. It was just hair.

A few months after chemo ended, my hair did return. It curled into haphazard ringlets on my scalp, lustrous and shiny in a warm shade of brown that I never would have imagined to be its natural color. I was so taken by its presence that I forgot to be annoyed by its quirks.

It currently hangs below my shoulders, softly straight like a curtain on a window rod. I still get a little thrill from running my fingers through its luxurious length, or pulling it back into a ponytail to get it off my neck on hot summer days.

I get it trimmed every eight weeks, occasionally blow it dry when I need to expedite air drying, but other than that, I don’t give it a second thought. Turns out, my hair behaves best when I leave it alone. And that suits me just fine.


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