Alison Curtis: Hairy days as I untangle my daughter's lockdown locks
Pic: Marc O'Sullivan
One of the things with the most sense of urgency in our household this lockdown is... tending to hair! All of our hair. My husband's, my daughter, Joan, and mine.
I have managed about four haircuts for my husband since March of last year. Ironically my first go at it seemed to be the best, with my third attempt being a very obvious “home cut”. But we are getting through it and his general appearance isn’t suffering, thankfully.
Joan and I are a very different story. We both have fine hair but she has a hell of a lot more of it than I do. It is getting increasingly difficult to comb through what is basically a haystack attached to our heads now.
For me, I am, of course, able to manage it better and perhaps after giving birth have a much higher pain threshold than my 9-year-old does. But for her, well it is apparently torture. Torture of the worst kind that I inflict on her after every shower.
The screams out of her, the terror cries. “You're hurting me!” “You are pulling on purpose!” “It's my hair, let me do it!”
The knots, at times, could house a small family of mice. Each time she gets out of the shower and I spot a ball of hair at the base of her neck I literally feel like reaching for a glass of Malbec!
We have tried a good few things to tackle what seems to be an all-consuming issue these days. We have tried different products, hairbrushes, and methods of removing the dreaded tangles.
Recently we started putting loads of conditioner in while she is in the shower and combing through her hair then. It worked for a while but then reverted back to bunching into soul-destroying nests once we dried it.
We got to the stage last week whereby we had to have a serious conversation about … cutting it!
I have cut her hair a lot in the past. She didn’t make it to a professional hairdresser until she was about five. I have kept her fringe in pretty good condition throughout the years, and during the summer took about an inch off.
With each haircut, people paid us compliments and no one made an ‘Ohhhhh’ face and said “Mommy must have done that!” So, I felt pretty confident I could do a good job tackling it once again.
As this was getting serious, real action needed to be taken, and it took a lot of convincing for me to be able to even get to the stage with her where we would pick a day for the cut.
There was a lot of talk about the cut the night before to the point I actually said, "Enough go to sleep!" The next day we had a shower, washed and combed her hair which, of course, took forever. But with each brush, I got more and more excited about making that first glorious cut.
Thankfully we have proper hair scissors, and my heart was pounding with glee as I reached for them. Snip. I held it up in my hand like I was holding Simba. The first chunk of hair. I showed it to Joan and she didn’t seem alarmed so that was a good start. It went well and only took about 15 minutes and I managed to cut a whole three inches off.
Once I was finished combing through her hair, it was like gliding on ice and I think Joan and I both breathed a sigh of relief. It has solved our problem for now but like everyone else in the country, I will be ecstatic to hand the job over to the real professionals as soon as I can!
