It's Getting Hairy
By Jay Jones
@jacelya_jones
My tools are out, drafted for duty into the unjust Hair War: shampoo, conditioner (wash-out and leave-in), combs, various brushes, and the blow dryer—silent, they stand ready to perform with grim obedience. I’m the villain again, a fascist dictating curls must be tamed, dominating strands, while supporting a coercive attempt to bring order and style to unruly strands. My teenage girl and I square off across the master bathroom.
It all started on the eve of our Independence Day trip down south. The wildness of her hair led me to cross into her territory. And by that, I mean I went into her room.
“Do you know how you look?” I ask (ever the empathic, thoughtful mama).
“I’ll just put it in pigtails,” she counters.
“That’s not going to work,” I say, remembering all the times I’ve washed it between blowouts and heated straightening, only to watch the coil of her hair grow tighter and tighter.”
“Well, what am I going to do?” she says. I sense imminent surrender to my weapons of mass tangle destruction.
“Well, if we had time this morning I would wash your hair myself and flat iron—”
“Mom, you do my hair!” The white flag.
This isn’t the only armed conflict in which my oldest daughter and I have engaged: there are the Makeup Struggles and the Boys Who Are Only Friends Hostilities. Many times I’ve offered advice and counsel on those fronts only to find myself in hand-to-hand combat.
“How come I can’t have a friend who’s a boy? You did!” she said during our standoff.
“You can! You just can’t be in each other’s bedrooms alone. That’s the rule, like it or not,” I replied.
Now, as then, I do not back down. “I can help you not look like a clown.” These are the first shots fired in yet another bout of our seemingly endless war.
“You never help me! My friends said do it like this,” she says in response to my clumsy salvo. I don’t exactly know what she means. I think it’s just a sulky echo of what she’s been saying—the remains of her resistance, letting me know she’s not happy with me.
“If you want to know things, you have to let people teach you.”
“My friends—”
“Everyone doesn’t have the same amount of experience, honey,” I interrupt. I don’t know how long our truce will last, but we both agree to a temporary ceasefire.
***
As she sat in front of me, silently allowing me to tease out her tangles and scraping up dandruff, I realized that this battleground is a place where a lot of other foes are fought and defeated—doubt about how much I care, not just about her hair. As I pour another handful of conditioner into her strands, my daughter pours out secrets and fears: She tells me she’d change her smile, if she could change one thing—spaces in her teeth—and says she doesn't want my opinion about that. She laments her friend who is a boy being in none of her eighth-grade classes, though there’s hope that he might be in gym with her, once she receives that class assignment. I sense her own inner war as she alternately asserts her independence from me (pushing away from my opinion on some topics) and asks me for help and advice (pulling me into her relationships and circumstances).
I love her. I understand her as a mama who was once a teenager with her own overbearing mama. With my divided perspective, I see her and hear where she’s coming from. My challenge is responding to both her growing wisdom and also the tangle of foolishness bound up in her youthful heart. I have to know which weapon in my arsenal is the right one and which ammo is needed for it—space or discipline.
I don’t know how other mamas manage, but it takes moxie to raise my teenage daughter. It takes a bulletproof vest one day and the breastplate of faith the next. I explain harsh realities, wearing the belt of truth.
It’s tough to figure out how to be her mama. Sometimes when I speak, I’m pretty sure she’s not listening or interested. Sometimes I have to be pushy about showing her that I have things to offer, even if she finds my knowledge unfathomable. I have to admit when certain things she wants to know push my limits of comfort and comprehension. I ask Grammee and aunties for help with things I’m not an expert in, things like sewing and makeup. I tell myself, you’re still a part of this, because you are responsive to her needs. You are answering them with your resources—connections.
These days, I stand at her height. She has grown so much. I can look into her eyes and understand the things she wants and why they’re important to her; I get her and why she is willing to battle for independence. She wants to bleach the tips of her hair, which is a pretty harmless allowance, less significant in the scheme of her life than boys in her bedroom. I can remember all the styles I wanted to try when I was her age, and I can empathize. At the same time, one of my jobs is teaching her about the effects of bleach on her hair and body, especially at such a young age. She stands shoulder to shoulder with me, but she is not an adult yet. I have to explain to her that not every person she trusts with her body and safety is necessarily reliable. I take that into account when I decide what arrangements I’m comfortable with whether she’s in my home or someone else’s.
I’m learning how important attunement is—building a relationship of confidence between us as best I can. Listening is the only way I can discern what I need to say to her and what I don’t. The most important battle strategy for me right now is avoiding minefields of discipline that could blow up our own relationship.
I rinse out my daughter’s curls with almost hot water from the kitchen faucet sprayer and then run boar bristles through it. She demands I stop short of styling her hair but concedes to me brushing in a leave-in conditioner. When I’m finished, her formerly pin-straight bob is a tight, curly version with a wavy frame around her pretty face.
Guest essay written by Jay Jones. Jay is a writer, a mama, and audio editor for Kindred Mom. Mom-a-Gram is the place where she can share all the words and projects–stories, screenplays, and things in between. Here she shares ideas about challenges and connections as she sees them in the role of Mom and in her identity as a child of God. Self-taught in many ways, she is always looking to make connections and find ways to improve her brain, her blog, and her brood (ages 2 to 14 years). Married since 2004 to her husband, Taylor, she’s been tied to her college sweetheart for nearly a quarter-century. Together, they raise their 4 children in the Chicago suburbs, where they enjoy pursuing creativity in the midst of the daily grind. You can read some of Jay's writing on her blog and on Instagram.
Photo by Lottie Caiella.