Why, always when I go get a haircut? Good thing I only go once a year.
First, there’s a long, long wait. Because it’s the weekend. Because there’s a sale. I don’t know, but I settle into an uncomfortable to chair to wait for 40 minutes. My reading options: Glamour, Cosmo, Allure, all with the usual inappropriate words screaming from the cover of each magazine.
I pick up the least offensive looking one to thumb through it while I wait. It’s better than staring at the two children sitting near me. Their names are both unisex, with odd spellings. They have the same haircut and are wearing almost the same clothing. One is a boy, one is a girl.
My magazine boasts everything from “stars” who are beyond gender, beyond “identifying” as gay or straight, or bi. Which doesn’t really make sense, because how can you be beyond not deciding between two choices? (That wasted about 5 minutes of wait time.)
And if I had a dollar for every time I read about a celebrity mom who wanted her daughter to know that she wasn’t just a mom, that she was something more (i.e., not at home, not there for her). Well, then I wouldn’t be at Mediocre Cuts getting my hair trimmed. But Gwyneth takes the prize, wanting to be “not just a mommy” but also “a sexual being.” Pretty sure her kids will appreciate knowing that.
The magazine makes me tired. All the trends, the new makeups and hair styles and clothing, the new actresses and actors and movies and music. It seems tiring, and I’m just sitting in a chair looking at pictures of it.
Then I’m up! My haircut. I let her know I had a baby 10 months ago, and that’s why I have no hair. Why there’s 3-inch-long pieces growing in and floating off the top of my head. My hair dresser tells me she lost hair with her child too, which is why she’s only having one. “It's not worth it!” she says.
She asks if I plan to have more kids, as she combs through my not-luscious locks of hair with a look of slight distaste.
“I do want more,” I say.
No comment. She does tell me to buy a volumizing spray, and blow dry my hair against the grain to add more “oomph” to it. But then she shrugs, “That's about all you can do. Sorry.”
So I leave Mediocre Cuts with ten less dollars in my pocket, minus an inch worth of split ends, contemplating thin and falling out hair, and the two children waiting for me at home. I pray every night for another one, another chance to say yes to God’s plan for our family, another precious life. For the sake of an eternal soul, I will always be open to changes another baby brings, saying yes to God again, desiring nothing more than to be “just a mom” again.
