The Evolution of a Curly Top

Anouk got her first haircut over the weekend -- two years and four months in. We took her to a kid-friendly salon in VB, let her choose whether to sit in a fire engine or taxi while the stylist snipped her ends, and had a lock of her Spanish flamenco Barbie's hair shorn to acclimate her to the general purpose of the visit. A. left the salon a half-inch or so less ragged around the edges; I left with a small plastic bag of curls that I will probably keep until the day I die.

When I was pregnant with Anne, I wondered (like most new parents do) what she would look like when she was born. Would she have my eyes, my grandfather's cleft chin, James's long legs? One thing I crossed my fingers for was that she would inherit James's hair -- thick and mostly straight, with only the barest hint of a wave. My own extremely curly hair has always been a little bit of a struggle for me. It never seems to do what I want, it has the kind of uncontrollable moods that require professional regulation -- exuberant on dry days, angry and puffed up on rainy ones. My whole life, I've been trying to wrangle it -- buying flatirons and hot rollers off of late-night infomercials, spending hundreds of dollars on products in the search to find one that would work, even, for a while in 8th grade, wrapping my hair in an Ace bandage every night to try to tame it by morning.

Sometimes I think of all the chemicals, the money, the time -- the not going for that run or swim because I wanted to keep my hair nice and frizz-free -- and I want to cry.

When A. was born, the first thing I noticed was her hair, dark and straight. I held my breath. But as the months passed, it only seemed to grow thicker and straighter. Maybe she had escaped the curly hair gene, after all?

Then around A.'s first birthday, I started noticing the first curls forming. Just a few. But then, suddenly, those few curls became a riot, seemingly overnight. They grew fast and thick, mostly horizontally instead of vertically -- they stuck out from her head in all directions like hair at a surprise party. Soon we had to put away the baby brush, with its flimsy plastic bristles. It just couldn't handle the explosion of her exuberant curls.

And even though I had been worried about this -- even though I've spent so much time and effort wrestling my own hair into submission -- I wasn't disappointed when I saw those curls on my baby's head. Anne's curls make her who she is and they are (objectively, says the mother!) adorable. Literally every time we're out someone will approach us to tell me how much they love her hair. People will smile at the sight of them and call her "curly top." They'll say, "I wish I had that hair!" But sometimes, a fellow curly-haired person will sigh and add something like, "She'll hate them when she's older."

I hope she doesn't. I couldn't imagine my daughter without her curls. I want her to love them as much as I do. But how can I expect her to when the only example she sees is me wrestling with mine? And in the first place, why shouldn't I like my hair? It's the same as Anne's, after all.

In thinking these things, I thought that maybe I should put down the flatiron a little more often, to try to teach her -- and to learn myself -- how to be happy in our own skin. To stop the negative self talk, the I wishes, and just be happy with what I've got.

So here you have it. Two curly tops, happy. It's taken one of us a long time to get here, but here we are, all the same.





Is there something about yourself that you started to love because you saw it in your child? Please share, let's keep this positivity party going.