Ever since my hair reached my lower back in the seventh grade, I have waged a perpetual battle with it. It frizzes, it curls, it corkscrews, it pokes out in every direction----it has a mind of its own. No amount of anti-frizz gels, leave-in conditioners or hair straightening at even the highest temperature can tame it. While most of my friends lament about how thin their hair is, I scour the internet for devolumizing tricks. Most days, I resort to putting my hair up in a simple braid or bun to get it out of my face and away from me.
At this point, you’re probably thinking “Well why doesn’t she just cut it off?” The answer to that lies with my mom. When she was my age, she had beautiful, knee-length hair that her own mom conditioned with coconut oil every night before bed. My mother had been raised in a tradition in which long, lustrous hair was a sign of health and vitality. But moving to America with me in her belly and three little boys in tow meant that she could no longer care of all that hair. But cutting it off didn’t mean that she forgot the tradition she shared with her mother and the mothers before her. From an early age, she encouraged me to grow out my hair even when I envied my friends’ effortless and chic short hairstyles. But at age sixteen, I refused to listen to her and stubbornly demanded to cut my hair into a chin-length bob. My mom was understandably disappointed but I didn’t really understand how much my decision to cut my hair affected her until I visited her relatives in India for the first time in seven years a year later.
My aunt is five years older than my mom, which puts her at sixty-three. Her hair is shot with streaks of gray, but just like my mom's, it’s still thick and supple, thanks to daily coconut oiling. She hugs me as she greets us at the airport, taking in my shorn locks and running a hand along the edge of my bob. “You’re all grown up! You’re taller but your hair is shorter!” she joked, laughing. A few days later, I find her and my mom looking through an old yellow album of family photos. My aunt pulls me into her chair, and together we gaze at the photos, my mom and aunt laughing softly as they recount childhood memories. They flip the page, and I look down at a photo of three women; my mom and aunt in their twenties and my grandma in her late fifties. It’s a candid shot of the three of them sitting criss-cross applesauce in a line, braiding and oiling each other’s hair. The photo was taken just as someone had something funny because all three of them are laughing and smiling as they braid and oil. My aunt glances at me and her mom. “We should do this sometime, replicate this photo just like how it was forty years ago.”
We did replicate the photo, and had a great time doing it. But I can’t help but think how much more fun it would have been if I had kept that crazy hair I had detested so much for so long, just to share that tradition with my mom and aunt. I won’t pretend that I suddenly appreciated my hair just from seeing that decades-old photo and experiencing that moment with my mom and aunt. And I’m also not saying that I regret cutting my hair. But I do understand that my hair isn’t just a part of my body; it’s a symbol of the tradition that the women in my family have carried for generations. It is the act that will connect the grandmother I never met to the daughter I may have. My hair isn’t unique in its frizziness, its curliness, and its obstinate refusal to be tamed. That’s a trait I share with two generations of women, and perhaps even more. The hair I find irritating my mom finds beautiful because it reminds her of all of the women she shares it with. And while I didn’t have that appreciation for my hair a year ago, I do now. Today, my hair has grown back to shoulder-length and this time, I’m thinking about not just keeping it, but flaunting it with pride.
