Curls


lost and found
by Jeneen R. Garcia
published May 13, 2006

When I was little, I had such fine, straight hair that my hairclips would keep sliding down from the side of my head to my ears. Then just before I turned 11, my mother dragged me to the parlor and had my hair cropped like a boy’s.

To have boyish hair at that age and, as she also pointed out, no breasts to speak of! It was only the first of a series of tearful episodes, my shoulders shuddering with sobs as the hairdresser snipped away every time my hair grew past my ears. My mother said I couldn’t grow my hair long because I didn’t know how to fix it. But aren’t mothers there to fix their daughters’ hair?
                                                                                     
Thinking about it now, I wonder if it was her way of seizing control of something, anything that could make her feel she was still in charge of her own world, even though she couldn’t grasp the universe of turmoil inside herself.

***

She had tried to grow her hair long some years before that. I thought it was pretty when she put on clips and ribbons, sometimes doing her hair in a French braid. I remember how happy she looked in those pictures from that time, her eyes sparkling, her natural curls falling almost to her shoulders.

She had always had curly hair even as a baby. In her pictures from when she was in high school up until she gave birth to me when she was 19, her hair looked wavy and wild, in a free-spirited kind of way. But with more babies to raise, she settled down to the no-nonsense, wash-and-wear cut so popular in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Except for that one time when she let it grow long.

A year after, she cut it short again. Then mine. 

***

After that, my life was one bad hair day after another. My fine, straight hair became coarse and unruly. She was right, after all: my hair was hopelessly horrible. It didn’t help that I was just as awkward and sullen.

It wasn’t long before I lived far away from my mother and her ideas of how my hair and the rest of my life should look. But by then I was going on my own for a haircut every month in parlors where everyone would tell me my “natural wave” was horrendous--distasteful at best--and had to be controlled at once. I would just sigh with resignation, and tell them to get rid of as much of it as necessary. Besides, I’m cool, I thought; I had no time for frilly girl stuff like long hair.

Sometimes I would go before a month was up. The more unhappy I was with the way my life was going, the shorter my hair got. It was so short at one point that I could see my scalp.

***

Perhaps it was the proliferation of shampoo commercials, perhaps it was the universe conspiring. About three years ago, all the men in my life started suggesting that I grow my hair long. So I did. But only because it was a challenge to be what my mother--and eventually I--said I couldn’t be with my hair: patient and neat.

Still, I was convinced I could only do it if my hair was straight. Every hairdresser I went to was only happy to agree. I soon got so frustrated with how the bombardment of chemicals didn’t work that I kept cutting my hair short every time it made some progress towards my shoulders.

Of course, there was also that sense of doom. My closest relationships were going sour beyond my control, and I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was hoping the mirrors in the parlors would reveal what it was in me I had lost.

***

After much self-renewing solitude, I decided that along with the rest of my life, I had to surrender my hair to God’s grace. What you seek indeed comes easily when you stop struggling to find it.

A year later, I looked in the mirror and discovered that my hair was not just wavy; the ends had become curls as pretty as my mother’s when she grew her hair long. Friends thought I’d gotten a perm. After all, curly-haired models in shampoo commercials were the latest thing. My own brother kept asking if I’d gotten a perm.

And I swear, strangers smile at me now more readily. But maybe it’s because with amazing grace, I have more smiles to give. What I once lost is now found.

***

My mother has gone to the States for good. To live the life she has always wanted, and perhaps, to find herself in a way she could not in a place too painfully small and familiar. Meanwhile, she has grown her hair long, like mine.

“Everyone says I look younger,” she exclaims, “With curls, we don’t even have to brush our hair.” She had it highlighted last year, the soft curls falling past her shoulders. And in her pictures, she is smiling again.

Comments

  1. =D i can attest to the frustrating nancy drew stage, the very long self-denial in short hair stage and the the more comfortable curly sue stage. how lovely to be a witness to this.

    hi to tita beng!

    HUGS,
    jemi

    ReplyDelete
  2. your mom is beautiful! may pinagmanahan ka nga! hmmm...
    first time I met you, a few years back, you were sporting the short hair. I swear you look more of you now even without actually knowing what you've lost and probably regained now... the curls fits you well

    ReplyDelete
  3. this is beautiful, neen. hair as metaphor. beautiful. =)

    ReplyDelete
  4. thanks =) natural metaphors abound in despair, thank God.

    ReplyDelete

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