kim's hairstory #1

from kim's perspective...

for as long as i can remember, i have had hair issues....not minor issues like, "i don't feel like doing this child's hair!" but major issues like, "what in the world am i gonna do with this child's hair?"

i can't remember much before the age of 6 but pictures tell the tale of an adorable little girl with thick beautiful hair...and then came one summer.  summer meant more time with my dad and more time with my dad meant someone else had to do my hair, mainly, his girlfriend.  but, his girlfriend had an older daughter and her hair was always nice, so no big deal, right? wrong!!!!  my dad's girlfriend obviously was not as knowledgeable about my texture and definitely was not as skilled with water and grease as my mom, so she took me to a salon, for a relaxer, without my mom's permission...at 6 years old.  the image of my two school pictures at 5 years old and 6 years old side by side still make me cringe.  who would do that to an innocent little girl? who would come along and change the texture, length and thickness of a child's tendrils all in a few hours time...all with an application of white cream in the hopes of less work and more straightening?

my mom is still not over the "relaxer" event and 35 years later, neither am i.  although i cannot remember the exact words, my dad's girlfriend did some negative talking about my hair in trying to get my dad to give permission for her to take me for the relaxer.  sure it had taken my mom hours to do my hair but up until that point I had never heard anyone say anything negative about my hair...i mean i was a pretty little girl with a thick, healthy head full of hair.  my hair was never extra long, about shoulder length, but it was robustly thick.  

when reminiscing on my "hair days" my senses are just as sharp now as they were then.  my mom would shampoo and condition my hair and she would sit on the couch with me on the floor.  i could vaguely hear my friends outside the window riding bikes, jumping rope, cheering and playing kickball.  i would beg to go out, tears streaming down my face, but i knew the sun would set before she would finish with my coils.  there was always the smell of grease.  it was normally blue but sometimes green and it was in a huge jar.  there was also a consistent "clanking" noise that was normally followed by droplets of water on my face, neck, shoulders and back.  the clanking? oh, that was mom's brush going into the glass of water  and then back to my head.  the first couple of days after the grease and water do were not cute, not at all!  even my hazel eyes didn't seem noticeable when my hair was in those 6-8 big "dookie" plaits. but generally, when mom took the big plaits out, my hair was manageable and she could style it all kinds of ways...and the compliments returned.  but special occasions, oh special occasions brought out the straightening comb!  and talk about memories, I remember being hunched over, holding my breath, trying to stay as still as possible as the "beads" in my "kitchen" got "popped".  I remember the smell of hair burning but more than anything i remember getting hit with the comb or brush if i hunched too much or jumped away from the hot comb.  but when it was done, it was a straight and greasy masterpiece and talk about compliments!  while i know the new dress and patent leather shoes may have also brought about compliments, in my mind, the straight hair was the star of the show!  this is when i began to think that i was pretty as long as my hair was pretty. but what did "pretty hair" mean?  

at 11 years old, i went to live with my grandmother.  my grandmother had one child, my dad and thank goodness. you see she is the smartest, the hardest working, the person who will do anything in the world for her family no matter how inconvenienced she might be...but lord knows, she cannot do hair!  i think when it was time for the move, i worried about my hair more than leaving my friends in dc, who were still outside riding bikes, jumping rope, cheering and playing kickball. (i wonder if YouTube was around how she might have faired but without YouTube, it was bad!) she had been going to the same stylist for years, a Baltimore staple, Ms. Dee Dee at Scruples Hair Salon and because i was now, "of age" i got a perm and joined her every two weeks for a shampoo and i got a "touch-up" every 8 weeks.  i thought this was the best thing since penny candy.  i mean i can still vividly remember little me, at 5 years old, taking the pillowcase of my pillow while watching the Mickey Mouse Club and putting it behind my ears so it could hang down my back and i could swing my "hair" to and fro.  so now, at 11 years old, i would be able to swing my hair without the pillowcase
....YES!!!!  and after the perm, i remember compliments, compliments and more compliments...so did that mean i didn't look as cute or pretty without the perm?  

i continued the regime of visiting the salon every other week and perms every 8th week through college.  by then, i was willing to pay my own money to get my hair done more often...i wanted a perm everytime my hair got a little puffy so every other week visits turned to every week and perms went from every 8 weeks to every 6 weeks. my edges, my poor edges that fell out when i had my hair relaxed at 6 that never fully grew back HATED the perm and i mean HATED it!  my edges would only stay straight for about 12 hours no matter what! no matter what kind of perm or gel you used, not even the "black gel" could hold my edges.  it was as if my edges knew all along that something wasn't right and they refused to conform. 

in my early 20's, a guy that i briefly dated told me i was the only pretty girl he had ever seen that didn't have pretty hair...er, thank you? well, no need to wonder, i think this was when i straightened my hair with a perm in it, desperate times called for desperate measures!  i mean i took it as a compliment but it made me want this "pretty hair" i had been hearing 
about since i was 6 years old...and not long after i ended relationship. (no, that wasn't the only absurd thing he said...i have also been on a diet since dating him...grrrrr!)

in my early 30's, i caught on to the tae-bo craze, and since i had been on a diet for 10 years, i decided to give it my all.  at the time, i had a short and sassy cut, one that earned you the right to get a "spot" perm every 2-4 weeks....HEAVEN!!!!  this was great and people called me nia long (who I look nothing like) but she was sporting a short cut so it was a win-win!  
my stylist even perfected my cut to hide my dying/dead edges.  i loved it!  until...one day i 
went to work, i was a teacher at the time, and one of my co-workers asked what happened 
to my hair.  still on the workout high, i mentioned i had done tae-bo the night before and 
"sweated" my hair out. she looked at with the eyes of an elder (she is my age, but she was serious!) and said, "don't you ever do that again!  you cannot come to work like that.  your hair looks like the rainforest!"  and she walked away...laughing. now rainforests are beautiful 
in africa and south america but based on her tone, her laugh and my knowledge of 
rainforests...it was not a good look in your head. some would have thought she was a hater,
but she was actually one of my best friends, still is... and i had just gotten her a job at the school, so she wasn't mad with me.  she wasn't hating, she was looking out for me....right?  i 
grew my hair back and never got a short-shaved-in-the-back cut again.  i also stopped 
working out but i'm not sure if that was rebellion from the twinkie alert comment from the guy in my early 20's or because i knew it would make my hair look unacceptable for work...i will 
go with the latter.  

in my late 30's my ex- husband and i had gone through a separation and decided to try 
reconciliation when he decided it was appropriate to tell me about a rendezvous with a woman he saw during our separation.  i will spare you the details but he ended with, "she 
had the kind of hair that could get wet in the shower." i had a child for this man, made a 
person...a life...a daughter with 50% of my hair growing from her head...and he is talking to 
me about a woman that can get her hair wet in the shower? in my mind, all i could hear was 
"pretty hair."  needless to say, the reconciliation did not work and i would recommend 
genealogy testing as he must be related to the jerk from my early 20's.  (i could also use some work in the see the same kind of man get the same kind of result department...different blog!)

now i am in my early 40's...after my divorce, i went with a weave...bad break-ups normally cause women to chop their hair off but after the rainforest comment, i went in the opposite direction.  (words can affect you for a lifetime!) i went with a high priced weave...i mean the point is for people not to be able to tell when looking at it, right?  again, more attention, because now, i had my very own, "pretty hair"...well kinda!  









one night i was out to dinner with my cousin and one of his friends and his friend said to me, "you are gorgeous, if you didn't have that weave you would be absolutely perfect!" right when i was thinking, are they all just that stupid, i told him the comment was mean and i could see in his eyes we weren't on the same page.  he clarified he was saying i was perfect because it wasn't a weave. now i could have gone along with it but i told him it was.  if he could have done the army crawl out of Applebee's, he would have, he was so embarrassed because he really had no idea it was a weave. but he got me thinking...maybe i would be perfect without the weave.

throughout my life i have missed out on gym workouts, pool parties, walks at the park, walks in the rain, hot yoga, a plethora of outdoor events, a surplus of hot indoor events and an occasional shower without the shower cap, i suppose. but i don't want that for my daughter.  at 8 she has had her hair flat-ironed a few times but she is mostly in double strand twists throughout the school year and braids in the summer.  recently, she wanted to sport an afro and we did for about a week but my knowledge on how to care for one was very limited and  when it was time for her to come home from a visit at her dad's, his girlfriend had been in her hair...no heat or perm, but oh, the memories!  

so i have started the journey, for both she and i.  me and my legacy.  she teaches me so much and right now she is teaching me to love and embrace me.  she loves me no matter what.  even when i know i am having a bad hair day, she doesn't see it. i have watched countless hours of YouTube videos and attended an all day natural hair class for me and my girl.  we are going to stroll this road of naturalness together and love unconditionally each other and ourselves, no matter what our twists, kinks, coils or knots look like.  i have had enough compliments over the years to last me a lifetime and so has my 8 year old daughter, it is now about being beautiful without the crutch of "pretty hair" that has made me miss out on some of life.  I am still learning, really still very new.  i just cut the perm out last weekend and had it flat-ironed...for the last two weeks that lasts about 6 hours tops so i am going to have to start figuring my hair out and enjoying more of life and more of love...loving me in my natural state...for me and my girl.