I’m the official barber for the three guys in our household – their hair hasn’t been cut by anyone but me. And mine, well, it usually keeps growing and growing.
Until COVID. After a month of life without people aside from family, my isolation from the rest of humanity resulted in the need for some kind of variety. How ’bout a haircut? I was starting to tire of long hair everywhere – in my face all the time – a bun held by a hairstick the only way of maintaining any semblance of peripheral vision.
I stood in front of the mirror, pondering what to do. Go gradual or go big? I started with a lop of about 5 or 6 inches.
No. Go big and get it over with. Try something wholly different. Now’s the time to risk. To look like a dork when there’s nowhere to go. Or to find out I was meant to be short-haired all along. Here we go…
And just like that, a foot or more was on the floor and the remaining hair was layered. No reversals. A few patient years or more of growing back if it looked ridiculous in comparison to the long-haired look from just 30 minutes beforehand.
I had bought a 2-pack of Sun In online to see what would happen. I’m not one to color or highlight. Gosh, I’m not one to spend any time on hair or coiffing, so this would be a huge departure from my norm. Frankly, I’d rather spend time on just about anything but hair and cosmetics. But trying to fill the hole that could only be filled with people necessitated some new kinds of life-living.
Sun In sprayed and blow dryer blown (heat activates the peroxide, as the bottle instructed me), I had myself a new look. With the help of some rolling back and forth on my pillow during the night, I awoke with hair reminiscent of Tom Hulce in the movie Amadeus.
I didn’t dare photograph it standing up when I saw it in the mirror. Oh, how I yearned for a rewind button!
And so began the added element of waiting – not only for the pandemic’s isolation to end…
…but for my hair to now grow out. Ugggh.
I rolled with it. What else can you do? When the warmth of summer’s rays signalled swimsuit weather, every time I set out for the water with my paddleboard, I spritzed my hair with a few more sprays of Sun In and came back a few hours later with lighter hair.
It grew on me. It was fun. It worked. It was even cute at times. Until I decided on one more cut a few days ago to keep it that length just a tad longer, in case I never go back to it. Now it’s less paddleboard-girl and more Amy Klobuchar. Not what I was going for.
I don’t like regrets, so I enjoy my present moment regardless. It’s just hair, right? While I do kind of long for what I had…
…it’s all yet another lesson in waiting. A relatively frivolous one, at that.
A friend just remarked the other day that now’s the time to fail. To try things and blow it; to tank. I never really thought of it that way; I felt a surprised sense of lightness at that viewpoint.
May my Klobuchar cut give you a little lightness sometime – perhaps a laugh when you see me on the street. A knowing that right now, we’re all just improvising the best we can, laughing at the lightness to release all the heavy.
No offense to Amy Klobuchar or anyone with her cut. It’s just not all that great on me.
I’m always switching up my hair style and color. How I long to teach you the ways of barrettes, big bobby pins, and little alligator clips! Your hair cut is pretty good, but my unasked-for opinion is that you should step away from the Sun-in.
Yeah, the Sun In is all for some variety. It probably won’t be a mainstay for the duration of my life. Or will it? 🙂