HAIR

When I was six I believed that my super-power was in my hair. Each night at bedtime, my mother read from a colorful book of children's Bible stories. My favorite story was Samson and Delilah. From that story I deduced the existence of duplicitous individuals who fake love to take power. As dumb as Samson, I never guessed the recreant was my own mother.

In case you don't know the Bible story, or the 1949 movie starring Victor Mature and Angela Lansbury, the gist is this: Delilah is bribed by the lords of the Philistines to discover the source of Samson's strength. After three failed attempts at doing so, she finally goads Samson into telling her that his vigor is derived from his hair. While he slept, the faithless Delilah brought in a Philistine who cut Samson's hair, draining his strength. The Philistines took him prisoner, gouged out his eyes, and forced him to work as a draft animal, turning a mill in a Gaza prison. (Google).

I was born in 1951 when tight permed hair was all the rage for women, especially after do-it-yourself home permanents went on the market. As a preschooler, I loved long hair. My mother badgered and coaxed me to let her cut my hair and give me a perm. She said I would look so cute. I resisted, willful from an early age. After a year of hounding me, I finally gave in to the cut and perm during the summer before first grade.

She set me on the kitchen table and cut away my locks. Then she put this smelly stuff on my head and rolled it so tight it pulled. I was fed up with the enterprise long before she finished. She kept encouraging me to be patient and wait for the end result. "Cute as a button," she promised.

She rinsed the chemicals, added rollers, put me under her hair dryer, and fluffed it out with a brush. "Go take a look", she smiled, pleased with the outcome. I vividly remember walking from the kitchen to her bedroom to check out my new look in her large dresser mirror. The image terrified me and I burst into sobs. I could feel anger boiling up inside of me, a near stroke at age six, knowing my hair was gone and nothing could be done.

Photos taken same year as the cut/perm

I had to express my fury. I stood there shaking my arms up and down in a groaning tantrum. Finally, from the bottom of my heart and with full lungs, I shrieked, "I WOULD GIVE UP CHRISTMAS TO HAVE MY HAIR BACK!"

I remember my mom's expression reflected in the mirror behind me. Her delighted smile dropped to a look of shock, maybe even fear. My offer to sacrifice Christmas helped her to realize the gravity of the situation. She stared straight into my reflected eyes, groping for a response. Finally, she said, "Deborah, I promise I will never cut your hair again."

I looked up in a bit of surprise. Perhaps it was worth this punishing phase of dreadful appearance to learn that through the strength of my conviction, I had power over an adult. At that time this important concept was an unconscious fact. But as a six-year-old, it boiled down to the belief that my power, like Samson's, was in my long hair.

To this day I get nervous in the presence of scissors. Over the years I have worn my hair half way down my back, sometimes shoulder-length, and occasionally trying out a soft bob, always returning to flowing locks.

Photos of author senior year of high school and a sweet time between first and second year of college living in West Virginia. The days when Hair, the musical, became a metaphor for a new generation.

Oh, give me a head with hair Long, beautiful hair Shining, gleaming, streaming Flaxen, waxen

Photo provided by Tom Emswiller.

I transferred my love of long hair to my daughter Bronwyn.

Bronwyn was born in 1981 with gorgeous bronze hair. At 18 months, she won first prize (a Burger King crown and a stuffed rabbit) as "prettiest redhead" in a hometown shopping mall contest. Her hair grew and grew and grew. I trimmed it only when the ends got a bit straggly. She wore it in braids most days because she was an active child, upside down as much as right side up.

A favorite memory of her long hair is this: During our Bolivia years, we had a menagerie of pets that ran freely within our walled garden. Bronwyn, age 9 or 10, had a vicious pet rabbit, Thumper Bunny, who attacked both the Cocker Spaniel and the Toucan that could not fly due to a broken wing. After finishing her homework, Bronwyn went out to the garden and stretched out on the grass with her braids extended. Once in position, she called out, "Thumper Bunny!!!!" The rabbit came running from a hiding place, grabbed her braid in his teeth, and ran round and round and round her body like the circle framing Leonardo DaVinci's Vitruvian Man.

Photo of Bronwyn in our Bolivia garden where Thumper Bunny lived.

Writing this story, prompted me to ask Bronwyn what her hair meant to her. This is what she said.

I knew I looked different from others and it was something that people liked, coveted. In South American the indigenous people touched it for luck, the color of gold. You had long hair and I thought that is how I should wear it. My hair became such a part of me that when you suggested a trim, I was fearful and this instilled in me a fear of hair cutters.

Photo: Bronwyn living in Puno, Peru here on a boat in Lake Titicaca, the land of Inca Gold.

Bronwyn continued,

I always wore my hair pulled back or braided, never comfortable wearing it down. When we lived in Nepal I watched a woman with long hair, like mine as she pulled up her long hair and twisted it into a bun without any pens or rubber bands. I ran up to ask her to show me how to do that. She told me it was a Burmese technique. So I went from braids to a bun.

It was a little bit of a problem in horseback riding in college. Hunt seat equitation is about look and style, tucking up hair into helmets. My hair didn't fit into my helmet. So I had to wear a larger helmet because of my hair and the look wasn't great.

I decided to study abroad spring of junior year and I was worried about caring for it properly. At that time my hair extended to mid-calf. There was a hair drive, "Locks for Love", using human hair to make wigs for child cancer victims. The minimum was 10 inches. I thought I would do 10 inches but they asked for 24 inches. I felt really sad. A loss of identity, but also a relief. Since then I keep my hair the same length.

In my deep dive on hair I began to ask friends about the importance of their hair. Most commented that one's hair is the first thing people notice. It either flatters or distracts from appearance. The way you wear your hair says something about your identity. But none came out with a heart wrenching saga such as mine at age six.

Deb Denton, a dear relative, has long white hair, so I asked her thoughts on the matter.

I asked, "When I told you I was going to write a blog about hair, what did you think it might be about? Why might I choose this for a subject?" Here are a few of her thoughts:

Hair is a fixation for every adolescent. The first thing teens think about and check before leaving the house is their hair. My mother and I were always in a constant battle over hair. She did not like long, straight hair. She said it was "stringy".

My mom teased her hair, lying carefully on her pillow at night so it would look like she wanted it to the next day. To this day she gets her hair "fixed" once a week and doesn't comb it between appointments. She doesn't want the hair spray to lose its bonding. She uses a can of spray every two weeks. Not until ninth grade did she let me grow my hair long. She thought that how I looked was a reflection on her. This was the sixties when you teased your hair. When I graduated my hair was shoulder length.

In the last five or six years I've let it grow really long. It is so easy to care for. I can just tie it up with a knot or rubber band. Fits with my life style. She went on, I wasn't trying to impress anyone I was just letting it grow.

[Note:The photo of her key ring is evidence that she has a lot of irons in the fire.]

In other words, hair is important, but it's not paramount to most has it has been for me.

I have an aversion to shaved male heads. In spite of that, I dearly love my bald brother-in-law, Randy, who is a retired army chaplain. Randy is a big-hearted and brave guy. While training an army recruit to parachute from an airplane, the recruit's parachute got tangled in Randy's. They both fell to the ground with the recruit landing on top of Randy. So, Randy has super power even if he does shave his head. He has shaved his head for years so I looked to him as a trusted source. I asked Randy what are some of the reasons men shave their head. Here is what he said.

Some men believe that shaving their head makes them look more masculine.

In my case, I can't grow hair or it grows in patches. Some men shave their head every day, once a week or whatever. There is usually no set schedule. I shave mine on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Other men shave their head due to cancer or in solidarity with a family member who loses hair due to cancer treatment. Sometimes they shave hair when they lose a bet reaching for a goal for a fundraiser. Others shave their heads because it is stylish, because their wives like it, or because a shaved head hides the gray.

When my beloved nephew, John Bowen (pictured on left), was struck down with cancer last year, dozens of fellow firefighters in Fayetteville, NC shaved their heads and wore bracelets that read, "Bowen Strong," in solidarity with this great young man. "We are with you, Captain Bowen!"

One of the great pleasures in writing this blog is hearing how the topics stir discussion in readers' households. My sister, Krista, sent me a text. She said that her husband, Randy, told me his explanation for why men shave their hair and they talked about it. She had additional ideas to share and wanted to tell me the catalyst for her husband shaving his head.

This is what Krista shared about Randy's catalyst for going bald:

Randy was deployed in the Middle East before our daughter Rebekah was to marry. Randy sent us a picture. He was pretty much bald except for a tuff of hair right in front of his head. Rebekah told him she was not sure what that was on his head but he had to get rid of it before the wedding because it could not be in the pictures. He came home with a shaved head. His catalyst.

Photo above: Randy's 3 daughters love his bald head. Pictured are Rebekah, who presented the caatalyst ,along with Lizzie, Leah and my sister Krista who love Randy anyway he comes.

As a child xenophobe, I was conditioned to see beauty through a cultural and racial lens, having grown up in a white, lower-middle-class home and community that often retorted, "At Least I'm white," when they hit rock bottom. As a young child, I pondered the "misfortune" of African American women because of their wiry hair. I noticed what I perceived as failed attempts by Black women to straighten their hair to achieve "white standards" of beauty. I was marching right along the bigotry path, in step with what people around me said and thought. One style, one race superior. One style, one race inferior.

Phtographs by Kwame Brathwaite who coined term Black is Beautiful in the 1960s.

My opinion changed in my late teens, when some African American women went back to their roots wearing their hair in an Afro or in braids, throwing the spotlight on beautiful bone structure and facial features. A photographer, Kwame Brathwaite, photographed influential Black artists, musicians, models and cultural figures during the 60's and coined the slogan "Black is Beautiful." He encouraged Blacks to claim their natural beauty and heritage, and whites to wake up to a different and equally significant consciousness regarding beauty.

My life path provided different perspectives and experiences than I grew up with, including the opportunity to develop friendships with some super-smart black teens. As a Guilford College undergraduate, I worked at A&T university in Greensboro for a summer or two and received my graduate degree in community psychology and parenting from North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC, both Historically Black Universities.

As an adult I lived in two African countries and worked in a dozen others., finally coming to realize deep in my bones that there are other ways of seeing the world. By becoming a Xenophilia, attracted to other cultures, my life would be enriched and my world view far changed, including perspectives on what beautiful hair or dress should look like, what good food tastes like, and even how to raise a child. I began to worry about globalization that offers connectedness and economic gains through uniformity with Western ideals, a concept that fails to appreciate the unique gifts that make each culture different and special. If we provide equality of resources (e.g. internet) while we also recognize and celebrate the special gifts unique to each culture, then that would be globalization that could make the world a better place.

Painting by Jonathan Green, a contemporary artist from Charleston, who paints the Gullah people of Low Country South Carolina, celebrating their fascinating history and culture.

A delightful novel, Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngoze Adiche, threads the theme of hair as a metaphor for race throughout the story of a Nigerian woman, Ifememu, and her immigrant struggle to acquire food, housing, work, university education, and a professional career. Adiche uses laugh-out-loud humor to tell the story of Ifememu's struggle to understand America and speak "Americanah", realizing that success is linked to adopting white style, taste, and syntax.

As her story unfolds and her hair falls out from straighteners and hot irons, she begins to write a blog – Understanding America for the Non-American Black. These reflections help her to reclaim her natural beauty and cultural heritage, as they give readers an opportunity to recognize America's racist underpinnings (Critical Race Theory). Ifememu came to see how her life was enhanced by becoming a person who was both American and Nigerian.

Long ago I began to appreciate the regal beauty in the face of African women who wear their hair cut or braided to fit their hair texture and cultural identity. I also noticed that Africans and African Americans age gracefully and beautifully, mahogany skin glowing against a halo of gray hair. It is hard to maintain beauty on an aging white face. At 70, I have dark circles, a chin filled with tiny holes from pimples I was warned not to pop, and too many wrinkles from sun worship. I have naively believed that my last vestige of youth and beauty is my hair.

I proudly let it go gray naturally, never tempted by a color rinse. I noticed that women who dye their hair look freakish, fading skin works best with fading soft hair color, and that their hair falls out. Older women are starting to own their graying hair but if still employed, this comes with risk. Last week I read a news article about a Canadian female TV newscaster who decided to go gray and was fired. Closer to home, Alex Wagner, was chosen to takeover Rachel Madow's nightly news hour on MSNBC. I was not surprised to note last night that her hair was died a darker black than the day before.

So with free-flowing gray hair, I've come full circle back to the six-year-old who believes her power is in her hair.

Turning 70 was really hard for me. A year later, I have not settled into the idea that my days are numbered. In November, facing awareness that I looked and felt "old," I made an appointment with my hair stylist to see what she could do for me. Standing behind me she fluffed up the sides of my hair and asked, "What would you think about a bit of layering?" I froze, dreadfully afraid of scissors. Finally, I agreed and she gave me a shoulder length cut with subtle layers that softened my face and made it easy to toss about in a wind-blown look, like the models in magazines. I felt pretty again.

Those 3 inches erased years of wear and tear. I looked great, and most importantly, younger. Six weeks later I went back to my stylist, too soon for adequate interval for growth and she trimmed out my hair's best feature, it's thickness. Six weeks later, back again, I talked too much while she was cutting and the more I talked the more she cut. The results looked a bit like it was cut with a bowl. I take full responsibility. My hair stylist is best in town and brave to take on a client with high anxiety about her hair.

I sent her these three photos taken two days after each cut. I told her that I claimed total responsibility for the bad results. She suggested we give it some time to grow and take it a bit more carefully. I promised to keep my mouth shut during the retrieval process. She is such a good sport. Did I mention she has beautiful, long red hair?

To cheer myself up, I called my friend, Caryle. We met in Bangladesh in 2001 when we both worked for USAID. I was taken by her lovely appearance – flowing hair, thin physique with movements like a dancer. She had an individualistic dress style, a Bohemian beauty. Beyond appearance, I found her most striking quality to be her ability to ask great questions and give sincere focus to the answer. She is a big thinker, her ideas laced with humor, an enjoyable companion. Younger than me, she became a professional mentor and treasured friend. I was honored that as a single parent, she chose my husband and me as the emergency contact for Natalie, during the four years we were together in Bangladesh.

Caryle is third from left in photo with her colleagues in Bangladesh.

Her next post was Kenya and ours was Tanzania so we continued to see each other from time to time. Natalie blossomed. A soccer star at the International School in Bangladesh she rose to greater heights at her new school, the International School of Kenya, providing the penalty kick that won one of three international regional championships. Natalie settled into her new school while Caryle developed an illness that was difficult to diagnose. She was sent back to the U.S. for a medical evacuation, and diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a type of blood cancer in the platelets, leaving Natalie behind to finish her junior year and oversee the pack-out of their household goods to the U.S. What a kid! What a mom!

Caryle went through an excruciating scenario of treatments. She had five painful broken ribs, and was immune deficient. It was several months before she responded to chemotherapy and was able to receive an autologous stem cell transplant in December 2007, a near-death experience involving a mother-load of toxic chemo, requiring a full year to recover. Severely underweight and bald, she clung to life.

On the days Caryle hung between life and death, I walked around with my heart in my throat imagining her greatest fear, leaving her fifteen-year-old daughter an orphan. But every time I contacted her, she cheerily told me she wasn't dead yet and cheered me up with a slew of funny hospital anecdotes where she was held in isolation. Never underestimate the power and determination of a woman bent to protect her child by living against odds. That's Caryle.

Relieved that she wasn't going to die, I turned my attention to another concern, how losing her beautiful hair to chemotherapy would affect her self-esteem. I've had fifteen years since then to verify that Caryle's power is not in her hair, not in her appearance at all. What one sees in Caryle is her joyous and hopeful spirit, her keen interest in the lives of those she loves, and for any person who suffers misfortune, her heart is there with them. She takes action to spread love where needs exist. Caryle heals others. Caryle is a Chicken Soup for the Soul kind of person.

[Photo: Caryle, in recent photo, 2023, having fun with her Nephews.]

Caryle's health improved enough for her to continue her work with USAID, supporting Missions in Eastern Europe and Yemen. She is now retired and lives in Florida with Natalie. We speak regularly.

A phone call with Caryle covers many topics such as: family, Florida politics (DeathSantis Dystophia), books (where DJT best fits in Dante's Inferno), saving the environment (her volunteer work with the Sierra Club), global issues, her popular adult education class on countries and regions unfamiliar to most Americans, and her garden (discussions with grand-dog Lexi about where she can and cannot dig), and the awesome flowers in the USF Botanical Garden where she volunteers. She never mentions her health unless asked and after a brief update, she might say, "Remarkably, I'm feeling very well and happy to have time with friends and family". She immediately pivots the focus from her to me. She asks about my life, more eager to hear about me than talk about herself.

Over the past fifteen years, Caryle has been in and out of remission, and my great desire is to comfort her when the cancer re-emerges, as she has done for me through some rough spots in my life's journey. None of that. When I call, she sprinkles me with gold-dust. I can always count on her to stimulate my intellect and elevate my spirit. She has a knack for taking a dead serious subject and making the story very funny without losing the poignancy. Things are bad but sometimes the more awful a situation, the funnier it seems. No need to bury yourself in gloom, either take action for change, or simply shake your head and laugh.

For example, she sent me a local newspaper snippet in a text. News Flash: Florida woman jumps into Tampa Bay with Dog… rescued by Police Marine Unit. That would be me, she added to the text.

I asked for details and this is what she said: I was walking Natalie's dog, Lexi, along the bay and she just jumped in. There were no nearby access points so I had to scale the wall to get down to her. Spent 1 hour in the water with her before getting rescued by Police Marine unit. Sustained lacerations from barnacles and 5 stitches but all is well.

]Photos: Caryle and Lexi after the water rescue. Since then Natalie has taught Lexi some water skills..]

Caryle sent me this TED Talk on Being Human, by poet Naima Penniman, a stunning spoken-word performance, set in a forest, that celebrates the wonders of the natural world and humanity's connection to it. It put me in a state of calm. When I watch the poet's face, her words, her movements, she becomes Caryle. Like the poet, Caryle energizes people to political and environmental action and then brings them back to a place of peace. Check it out: https://www.ted.com/talks/naima_penniman_being_human?language=en.

In conclusion, my rationale for writing this long blog on hair was due to my worry that I may have passed through this life without realizing that my hair, or appearance in general, is not my super-power. Thankfully, I am still left with some time on earth to ensure that my hair is the last thing people think about when they remember me.