Crazy Hair

I guess I should be grateful that I now have enough hair to experience a bad hair day, but I’m not. Instead, I stare in disbelief at the stubborn tendril that curls over my left ear, defying gravity and maximum hold hair gel. My bangs (i.e. hair not yet long enough to tuck behind my ears) fall across my forehead in a way I like to (not so) affectionately refer to as “The Swoop.” I experiment with parting my hair on the left side, then on the right. I waste precious moments of the day untucking and retucking my sideburns behind my ears, wondering all the while if girls are even supposed to have sideburns. Caught in that awkward stage of trying to grow my hair out while not looking like an overgrown sheepdog in the process, I long for the day when my bangs are long enough to pin back without giving me a receding hairline.

I know, you think I’m exaggerating. But what you see is the result of many minutes (okay, hours) of patting, twisting, pulling, scrunching, and combing. Zack, however, gets to see the real deal. My morning hairstyles are his source of constant amusement. My hair has its good days and bad days, and half the time I look in the mirror and think, "What the heck am I going to do with you?" Sounds like a metaphor for my life.

Yet for all its untamed craziness, my regrown hair (and the fact that my face no longer looks like an overinflated balloon) has stopped people from staring at me and assuming I’m sick. Now I can go in a grocery store without little kids pointing at me and asking their parents, “Why doesn’t that girl have hair?” I can join the ranks of other women who chopped off their locks and lament with them about the awkwardness of growing them back, without sharing that I lost my hair from chemo, not by choice.

I’m sure I’ll have a moment next week or even tomorrow when I hate my hair, but today, I think it’s pretty cute.