Hair There & Everywhere

There's so much I could say about hair. My own curly black locks are something it took me years to appreciate. And if I'm being honest, I still fight against them a bit. I think I'm looking back to the golden age of my hair, when I was about 11 or 12 and it was perfectly curly in it's little pencil-width ringlets and it was long. It's that last bit that's the kicker: ever since I cut my hair back in middle school, I've never realised the sort of elbow-length tresses I've always envied on others.

Plus, I have to add this, I need to find a way to get a decent haircut. I mean, I've had some nice hairstyles, but never a life-altering cut. Mostly because there are two types of hairdressers I've seen in the places where I've lived: white-people hairdressers and black-people hairdressers. Now I'm not being racist here, but for a girl who sits squarely between both camps, I'm screwed. I'm not enough of a sistah to have hair that takes well to relaxers or hot combs or really heavy moisterising creams. Likewise, I can't get into this crucible of every-day hair washing or the low-maintenance "brush it and go" sort of philosophy. For the first, my hair is too dry in its own state to stand up to daily washings: it just gets brittle and fuzzy if I try. And as for brush-and-go? Unless I'm loving the electrocuted poodle look, my curls need to be wet and conditioned in order to re-set, and when straight, these ebony tresses still require a good spritz or two with a leave-in to avoid looking like Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

Of course, this leaves me wondering what sort of hair Ethan will inherit. The Husband and I are both anything but pin-straight in the texture department, so it seems that curls or waves of some sort are a given for our kids. But what about colour? See; here's where things get tricky. We, both of us, are dark-haired. But, Sebastian's dark brown started life as a sunny blond, believe it or not. I actually didn't at first: I was shocked to see baby pictures of a little blond boy who was most definitely my husband. In every other picture I'd seen he was the sole dark-haired child in a sea of blondes in his family. And even my black hair has its auburn traces - my sister would go blonde in the summers as a little girl, and apparently my dad's first moustache managed to grow in like freaky Neapolitan ice cream: horizontal bands of blond, ginger, and brown.

So after a wondering nose wrinkle at his passport photo, I took a closer look at the scant little hairs on E's head today only to discover that - aside from the last vestiges of the hair he was born with in his little infant mullet - some flavour of sandy brown seems like it'll be the order of the day. At least while he's still little. After the first few years, though, it's anybody's guess. Though I admit, I'd be amused if he stayed relatively fair-haired.

Mini-Daddy and Momma