You would think that a 44 year old woman, who has been parenting for over 13 years would be able to organize, entice, motivate, bribe, or propel three children out the door and get to church by 10:30.
(IF you did think that, you would, in my case, be mistaken.)
This week, I must confess, it was the hair. I could no longer take the pained look my daughter gave me as she gestured dramatically towards her unruly mop and said “Mom, what? Me go – like this?” (as if, somehow, her chaotic curls were my fault)
Every other day this week, I said, “Yes, it’s fine, of course you can go (to school/soccer/grocery shopping/a friends’) like that; or you can choose to spray it with water, or put on a hair band” -(sigh)- “I just don’t have the time.”
Hope lit up her face as she said, “Later?”
“Mmmmm, maybe”, I mustered.
‘Later’ turned out to be Sunday morning. We had planned to go to church. I warned everyone that I was going to do Faven’s hair, and that would completely and totally take me out of the picture for at least an hour and a half. Everything was going so well…… until we got out of the shower. The Extra Moisture conditioner was no match for the dreadlocks forming in the back of Faven’s head. It took three of us- a bottle of detangler, leave in moisturizer (and a pot of coffee)- an hour JUST to brush those out. Then came the straightening balm, the heat glide, the blow dryer, and the flat iron. An hour later Ward came to check on us; I was more than half done.
I asked him, “How we doin’ for time?”
He said, “Great, as long as we leave in the next ten minutes we’re fine.”
I looked at Faven, who now had an asymmetrical mix of smooth, sleek dark tresses and tight, rebellious coils, and said, “All right, let’s go to church, we’ll finish the rest later.” Her response was not affirming! We missed church.
I am not sure why I feel such responsibility for her hair; it could be because we are still bonding (and YES, I want her to like me); it could be because I know her birth mother, aunts, grandmother and caregivers would have bent and twisted her hair to make it ‘stand down’ in ways that were nothing short of miraculous; it could be because I simply want to be needed, despite my time constraints; but also it is because I too was a girl who wanted to have great hair.
