Seventh Grade Hair

We lounged on the couch together, her head near my lap.  The boys were out of the house, and we were having a girls’ movie night.  I picked the movie, a favorite of mine from the 90s.  She didn’t like it much, as evidenced by the many times she got up to do something else while the movie was playing, and the repeated questions she asked about the story.  I was keeping her there by playing with her hair.

Her mid-back length, in need of a trim, bleached by the sun hair.  I twisted it, braided it, curled it around my fingers.  I gathered it in my fist and admired her thick, straight ponytail.  I relished in the awareness that she will still lie near me like this and allow me to touch her; blessedly, the angst that comes with the teen years has not yet arrived.  I still have time to wind her hair around my hands.

She, like many of her friends, wears her hair like this: long and straight.  In a cluster, these girls are nearly indistinguishable.  They all have that hair, those clothes, those shoes.  It’s the middle school summer uniform of 2015: long hair, busted tees, flip flops.

I think back to my own summer before seventh grade.  I had permed hair, a poufy business-in-the-front-party-in- the-back mullet that I sculpted with a curling iron and hairsprayed to within an inch of its life every day.  It was the ’do of the rural tween girl then.  Watch any movie from the 80s and you’ll see us in the background players, the scene fillers who weren’t a part of the main action but were included for cultural perspective.  The main characters didn’t wear their hair like we did.  We took a hint from the movies and perverted it to the curly helmet we all wore on our heads.  En masse, our mothers succumbed to our pleas for perms, and we mastered our curling irons and thought we looked fantastic. Before I knew it we were growing out our bangs and perms.  By senior year, our hair was completely different.

Did anyone wear their hair different than mine in seventh grade?  Probably, but I can’t remember many.  My memories are fuzzy of one girl who didn’t have bangs to tease and spray – probably her mother wouldn’t let her get her hair chopped in a thousand layers to coax in nine different directions.  Probably she was told that her unmolested locks were beautiful the way they were, loose and free. 

The way I tell my daughter that her hair looks great the way it is.  I love this sun-kissed look, I say.  No, you are not getting it colored or highlighted – you don’t need it.  Remember how you tinted the ends with Jello and they got crunchy?  Processed hair is expensive and time-consuming to maintain.  I should know; my appointment is tomorrow, and I’ve carved a three-hour block out of the day for it.

You need a trim, I tell her.  I know, she says.  I have split ends.  Nothing a good six-inch chop can’t fix, I tease.  She looks at me to see my smile.  You’ve got a month of summer left, I say.  Unless it really bugs you, you can get a trim in a couple of weeks. 

Until then, leave it.  Stand in a circle with your girlfriends and wear your hair together.  That long, straight hair from the summer before seventh grade will be gone in a moment, a breath.  We don’t know what next summer will look like, but it will never again be exactly like this.

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This post inspired by:

Mama Kat's Writing Workshop

Prompt #5:
What grade is your child going to be in? Share a memory you have of yourself at that same age.