Haircuts and New Horizons

I’m getting my hair cut today. A few years ago, I found a woman who is wonderful and who will, for a price, give me a hair cut and color that requires exactly no work or thought from me. I am more than happy to pay that price a couple of times a year so that I don’t have to spend a single second thinking about good or bad hair days, about products or blow dryers. I’ve reached a point in my life where playing with my hair is no longer fun. I don’t want to change up my look. I want to get dressed and do about my day.

Maybe this is the beginning of middle age, then. Maybe this is the day that I admit once and for all that no outfit, no product, no service is going to remake me into a new person. I watch my daughters try on endless outfits and help them with endless hairstyles and it’s fun. It’s fun for me, it’s fun for them. But for myself, meh. Maybe for a fancy night out, I’ll put in some effort. But generally, no thanks.

That isn’t to say I don’t enjoy making an effort in other places. In the last year, I’ve learned to make custard and to decoupage and to fix toilets. I like to think I will never stop learning. I hope I will never want to. But I wonder what it is that has led me to no longer care about the newest fashions or latest looks.

Part of it may be that the new looks remind me a little too much of my high school days. Those baggy jeans and crop tops should stay in the past where they belong. Then again, I remember my parents saying the same thing about bell bottoms and paisley when I was in middle school. My kids and I joke that when I was a teen, all the grown ups tucked in their shirts, so now, when they tuck in their shirts, I think of them like miniature 40 year old ladies. Meanwhile, the current actual 40 year old ladies in my cohort don’t tuck in our shirts, because we wouldn’t want to look old and unhip. They roll their eyes at my untucked middle age-ness.

They have convinced me to try a middle part again. I’ve told them it will be the first time since 1998 that I won’t have a side part and they all agreed, it’s time. I wonder if I’ll look in the mirror, at a face that is growing wrinkled, and still see my 8th grade self peeking through.

Back in college, I took an amazing class that talked about relationships throughout the life cycle – everything from infants’ attachment to the grief when a long-term spouse dies. In it, they talked about how divorces don’t happen at random intervals. There are bumps in the data – significantly more people get divorced at year 7 of marriage than year 6 or year 8, for example. And, according the data available then, one of the bumps occurs when the eldest child hits age 14. The professor speculated a few reasons – teenagers are hard, parents staying together for the kids might think 14 is old enough to break up, etc. But one that she mentioned resonates with me now – having a teen child makes you feel old in a new and different way.

Nothing makes time seem to flow faster than when my children have experiences that I fully remember having myself. I don’t recall much of elementary school; a few snippets here and there – Disney world, Christmas, a field trip or two. But my eldest is going to her first school dance this week and I can tell you the exact layout of the gym at my middle school dances. The memories are clear. And a part of me feels closer to her age than my own. I know I’m not 20 anymore, but it feels like it was just yesterday.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to be 20 again. I am remembering it with rose-colored glasses, for sure. When I went to college, my dad mentioned that he was jealous of all the fun I was going to have and cynical me retorted that he only felt that way because he knew how it was all going to work out. No stress about graduating and getting a job, about getting married and buying a house, about having kids and making it all work. It’s easy to look back there from here and see all the fun without any of the giant unknowns looming before us.

Still, I didn’t know then that this age would have its own giant unknowns. What am I going to do when my kids are grown up and gone? It’s 5 years until my eldest graduates. The twins will be two years later. How will we will fill the time? And then then even bigger unknowns. When will the day come that we get a dreaded diagnosis? Or get a phone call about a parent? Or? Or? Or?

So, I suppose my insistence on having easy haircuts and simple fashion choices maybe makes sense. I’m too aware of the fleeting nature of time and I have things I want to do with this second 39 years. And for me, hair ain’t it.