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A year and half ago, two months before my husband said he was leaving me, I decided to cut and donate my hair. I'd been growing it out for nine years, partly as a protest against my mother who had trimmed off too much my senior year in high school and partly because my husband asked me to keep it long. I'd wanted to cut it for a while-- I was finding it harder to handle daily as I tried to combat the frizz on rainy days, sweep up stray strands on the bathroom floor, and wipe away the sticky, sweaty feeling of it draped across my neck at the gym. I worried though that if I cut it off it might be the last straw, the last strand holding my marriage together. Maybe losing my locks would make me unattractive and be the thing that made him leave. It seems silly to place so much importance on hair, but I do wonder if cutting away thirteen inches wasn't another ax at the already splintered tree. Despite my fears, I made the cut. I left the hairdresser feeling light and free and half-skipped the block to my house. When I opened the door and met the gaze of my then-husband he started laughing hysterically, a loud, shrieking laughter that drove me with tears in my eyes into the bathroom to cry behind a closed door. When I told my friend how he had reacted and how fearful I was to return to work and face my brutally honest ninth graders she consoled me, "Don't worry. I think you'll find most people aren't that insensitive."
I grew my hair out again for warmth in the winter, to make it long enough to donate again, and really because I couldn't care less about fashion or fixing the same hairstyle I'd worn for most of my life. A month or so ago I read an article by a stylist who claimed the bob was the hairstyle that would fit any woman's face. The article included a brief video where an over-exuberant, blonde-haired host told a story of her newly divorced friend who had chopped her hair off and looked terrible with the new do. She turned to the camera, addressed all future divorced women, and warned them to get a bob if they were planning a radical change. As much as I hate to admit that I actually spent five minutes watching a girly fashion video and considering a new hairdo, I didn't forget the advice and have been contemplating the cut for more than a month.
Last week on the day of the divorce, my husband and I sat on a too-hard wooden bench in a room with four other couples, waiting for a judge to show up and begin the process. The judge arrived an hour late. I was hoping to pass the time silently staring out the large windows facing the benches, but my husband struck up conversation in his Irish whisper. As the hour neared its end and conversation lagged, he turned to me and asked if I was growing my hair out again. I glanced down at the ends that reached mid-way down my chest and said no. Despite not wanting to fulfill society's stereotype about divorced women, I cut 12 inches off my hair just a few days after the court determined my marriage had suffered an irretrievable breakdown.
I took the advice of the yahoo fashion expert and asked the hairdresser to cut my hair into a bob. In the chair without my glasses on, I watched as my blurry strands fell away. I asked her to cut off eight inches so that I could donate it. She said she would cut ten. When my ponytail was bundled in elastics and laid out over the ruler she had cut away nearly 12 inches. As she shaped the ends the final pieces of the foot fell away. I thought of how I would be heading home to an empty house and tried to feel good about the fact that I wouldn't be met with laughter, but really I just wanted to cry. As with my last haircut, the initial jubilee wore off within a few hours and as I stood before the mirror I couldn't help but think I looked like a boy. I'd already lost my husband and reasoned that now I'd lost my chances of finding a date for the next year and a half or until my hair was once again at a desirable length.
This morning as the first chill of fall settled into my apartment over the cracks in the windowsills, I pulled a hood over my head as soon as I stepped out of bed. After breakfast I showered and took to trying to blow dry my hair into the salon worthy fashion the hairdresser had created. When I was finished it looked nothing like it did yesterday. I felt cold, alone, exposed. I went to the kitchen and reached for the scarf I'd handmade in high school to wrap around my neck.
I can't recall if it was before or after my last haircut, but it was winter time nonetheless when I reached for my scarf on the hook in the kitchen. My husband was standing nearby and he watched as I struggled to tie the scarf around my neck. I said something about how I could never seem to make it feel comfortable. "Here," he said taking the scarf in his over-sized hands, "just do this." He folded the scarf, wrapped it around my neck, and pulled the ends through the loop he'd formed with an effortlessness that could come only from practice. He never wore a scarf. In an instant I knew his hands had made the same motion many times before; he had tied a scarf for his girlfriend. Then, the only evidence I had of her was intuition and he was quick to dismiss my doubt. I stared at him, the scarf poised under my chin and managed to ask how he knew what to do. "What tie a scarf?" he asked. "I see the nurses at work doing it all the time." And then I knew, his girlfriend was someone he worked with. His over-time, late-night shifts, and sleeping over at the hospital suddenly made too much sense. I wanted to rip off the scarf when I walked outside and felt the cold sting the tears in my eyes.
This morning as I reached for the scarf I thought of the day he had tied it for me. I wrapped it around myself, just as he'd shown me, pulling the knot up to my throat so the crocheted yarn would cover my naked neck. Cutting my hair, I'd cut off the security blanket that I reached for and wrapped tighter around my neck as needed. Without it I feel exposed, vulnerable. The reality of it all though is that no matter how long my hair or how tight my scarf, I won't be able to fill the emptiness I feel in my heart.
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