Hair Cares

Yesterday I called to make an appointment at my favorite salon in southern Maine. It was TIME, if you know what I mean. Why is it that there is such a sudden tipping point with hair - one day it is a reasonably minimal part of my personhood and the next an unmanageable barrier to me living a normal life?

Like so many other aspects of my body and self, my hair has experienced a sharp swing of the pendulum in the past twelve months. Toward the end of my pregnancy, by which time I'd downed several large bottles of Solgar prenatal vitamins, my hair was thicker than it had ever been. It was long, curly, and healthy. A co-worker of mine actually tossed the word "lustrous" at me one day as if I was in a Pantene commercial. It was surprising to me that any part of my body could be thriving, since I spent over half of my pregnancy dry heaving and lying on the bathroom floor while my cat watched me from the doorway, shaking his head at his mother's loss of dignity.

I learned after Noah was born, that about four to six months after labor my hair might start falling out. This seemed impossible since it was in such a glorious state, and also because I was continuing to take the less glorious horse tranquilizer-sized vitamins. Whether due to hormone shifts, or the fact that breastmilk contains the glue that keeps my hair stuck to my head and I basically was sucked dry, my hair did indeed start to come out in great fistfuls in the shower or whenever I touched a comb to my scalp. I told my husband we could make another cat to be a companion to Sidney, our eighteen pound mackerel tabby. Less funny was trying to vacuum the upstairs carpeting in our house, because my hair would fill the bag and jam the vacuum head, no matter how often we cleaned.

While I can't say that my hair is my biggest vanity by a long shot, this was disturbing to me. It revealed how little control I have over the working parts of this body-machine when nature comes into play. No amount of hair-strengthening shampoo could have prevented this from happening. Of course this kind of thing is happening all the time anyway - my hair is graying, and my laugh lines aren't looking so funny at times - but it's mostly so gradual that I don't notice it. Or at least, I don't mind it. This was different, it was hair today, gone tomorrow.

It's just hair of course, so I went about my business, trying not to pay attention to it or at least not to get all fussy about it. And sure enough, as the books said would happen, this past week it stopped falling out and is already noticeably growing back. It's been an amazing experience, becoming a mother, because one day I feel as if it's up to me to steer the ship, and the next day I'm just along for the ride. It's changes like this hair thing that remind me not to get too precious about other things as well. Most things in life could in fact quite suddenly fall out at the roots, and might just do that if that is what it takes to get me to the next best place in life. And isn't this the best, I have a boy with the fullest head of hair I've ever seen on a baby. I wouldn't give up these times for anything.