When you have long hair you want it short; when it is short you can't wait for it to grow out. My recent style lasted nearly 10 years. I was happy with pulling it back, running my fingers through it, and styling it in different ways. The best part was I could trim it with a bit of help from Tarun. So darned easy! And then the grays happened. Ugly, coarse, and obstinate. I struggled to beat my hair into place, used a myriad of products, and dreaded wash days. This week, with a little nudge from Tarun I said, "Cut!"
I found a stylist with good reviews and plunked in her chair with strict instructions: go short. She was mortified that I had arrived with no pictures and with such over-confidence. She insisted that we look at pictures and I speedily ran through the options: I like, I don't, umm fine, and definitely not. She pieced together the cut she said would suit my face but I knew what she meant was that she had devised the right cut to suit my nose, the unmistakably prominent feature on my short frame.
As she worked on the back, I felt the strands fall and my heart skipped a beat or two. My brain reassuringly said, "It's hair, it grows!" More tresses fell and I wondered what they would do with the cut hair, hoping that donation was a possibility. I was told that short hair cannot be donated. Sadly, nobody wants them. Some women, to my utter surprise, take their shorn hair home and scatter them in their yards. What?! I had never heard of that and when the stylist offered to pack mine, I swiftly declined.
Picking up one section at a time, the stylist painstakingly managed to balance the length of my hair without making me look alien. And now, getting ready is a breeze. The ears are getting used to feeling the chill. The brain is thrilled with the extra time saved on hair care.
And when my fingers miss running through the hair, the little voice in my head says: it's hair, it grows.