Hair

I hate my hair. Hating my hair takes up at least a part of every day. I don’t think this is healthy. I think that I should have dealt with this a long time ago. I should either have developed some charitable love for the poor stuff, or resigned myself to hating it and put it out of my mind. But it is still there, taking my attention, zapping my strength and my concentration.

My husband claims he loves my hair. That’s awfully nice of him. And, although I have instructed him carefully to lie anytime he thinks I look anything less than gorgeous, I actually believe that he’s telling the truth when he says he likes it. But he’s a guy. (Am I implying here that his opinion doesn’t count, and that I dress only for girls? Hope not.) And he doesn’t understand that if you wear your hair long, it is supposed to be thick and straight and glossy, or thick and curly and glossy. Not wispy and fly-away and stringy.

I am only wearing it long for him. Not even long—just “long-ish,” since, being so wispy, it’s actually hard to tell where, exactly, it ends. And it is so think that I have to use those little orthodontic rubber bands when I want to put it in a ponytail. My ponytail, when wet, looks like one piece of spaghetti. Really.

In the next life, I have already informed my sweetheart, I will have long, thick, curly hair. He’s not sure he wants that, since, as he claims, he likes it already “just the way it is.” I think he’s crazy. However, when I think about him changing in the next life, I see what he means. I love him just the way he is, and anything different would be less him, less the person I love.

But I imagine that God has something wonderful in store for all of us. I imagine that he can make me better but even more myself, and R better and even more himself. I think that, whether my hair changes or not, I will be very happy with the way I look in the next life. Maybe it will be because I have become a person who cares a lot less about appearances—but I prefer to believe that it will be because I will be beautiful.