Crown of Splendor

Oh hairs.

How I love thee, how I hate thee.

You recede from the corners of my forehead in a funny shape.

I slicked you for ballet and poofed you for school pictures.  I adorned you with scrunchies and headbands.  I put lemon juice on you once... remember the time I got in trouble for putting it in my little sister's hairs too... the lemon juice got in her eyes... she cried and tattled.  

I dyed you all black in college.  

Many of you couldn't handle the stress of life (or the Accutane) and fell out when I was the age of 21.  

A few of you turned white and silver when I was 24.  I started getting highlights to hide you from the world and I quickly forgot about you faded ones, but still you multiplied underneath all that dye.  When I stopped foiling you after my wedding (that stuff's expensive), you exposed yourselves and the colonizing you'd been doing on my head all that time.   There were lots of you and you were WHITE.

I started dyeing you again six months later. 

I also cut some of you on top into blunt bangs. I felt hip and cool, and like the stylin' haircut was a nice distraction from the eight or nine pounds I had gained. 

When I got pregnant many more of you appeared on my head.  You grew fast and thick and hair life was good.

After I had the baby, some of you fell out. 

A month or two later more of you fell out.

Months later more and more of you fall out and and you little ones in the front joined forces in forging a cowlick in my once-blunt bangs.   I did ombre.  I was stylin' again, this time with a cowlick.

Now I've let you grow oh so long. "Beach hair" I call you most days. 

Thirteen weeks since I paid a professional to work on you.  I braid you often.

You silver ones atop my head glisten in the light. 

Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is gained by virtuous living.  [Proverbs 16:31]

My espoused says you should all go gray and I should leave you be.  Glorious, he says.

I baffle.

Oh hairs.