I can't tell you all how many times I've been back to this thread--to read, to look at the pictures.
In rereading, I noticed that I mentioned my hair a number of times. Thought about it. Worth discussing? I think so.
Just to make sure that my memory is close to accurate, I googled "Jewish women, crowning glory." Got many, many hits. My memory is still functioning moderately well.
This starts with my maternal grandmother. It was she who told me that a goil's hair is her crowning glory. You dasn't cut it. (She always said dasn't.)
As a young woman, she had beautiful, silky light brown hair. She NEVER cut her hair. She braided it every morning and put it up in a grandma bun with hairpins. At night, she brushed it out and wore it long to bed.
My mother's hair and her sister's hair (eccentric aunt) was steel woolly, coarse, and curly/kinky.
My hair was extremely dark, silky, slightly wavy, and thick.
My grandmother loved my hair. She loved to braid it. Pigtails.
My mother and aunt felt that my hair was too straight. Hey, it wasn't like theirs. My mother dragged me to the beauty parlor to get a permanent. Back it those days, perms were smelly and slightly painful. I withstood the experience the first time. Didn't know what I was gonna get. Friz. Kink. Friz. The second time I resisted mightily. Screamed. Ran. Cried. I got one more perm (she was bigger than me). That was it! My grandfather interceded. Got her to leave my hair alone.
As I got older, my hair got wavier/curlier by itself. No chemicals allowed.
I loved my hair. The color. The feel. And my grandmother loved my hair. Whenever I got a haircut, she cried.
I always believed (and still do) that I look better with short hair:
I went to fancy shmancy hair salons. Got expensive haircuts.
But no matter how good it looked, unintentionally, I always let it grow:
And grow:
(Note: I never colored my hair. This picture was taken in Norway. After 12 days in Scandinavia, my hair got lighter. Go figure.)
And grow:
It wasn't that I liked the way it looked long. I just loved the hair itself, long. In thinking back, I'm convinced that my grandmother's words worked their way into my unconscious. My crowning glory.
The last time I saw my grandmother, she was in a nursing home. I stepped through the doorway and gasped. Her hair had been cut bluntly across and just hung there, slightly above her shoulders. Tears welled up in my eyes. They cut her hair! It was too hard to take care of.
I hoped that her senility would blind her to what had been done. She rarely knew who I was. Maybe she wouldn't notice her hair. I went in and greeted grandma. She thought I was her sister, who had died maybe sixty years ago. I went along with it. Then she started to cry. She grabbed the ends of her hair and said, "Look what they did to me." I cried too. Her crowning glory, I thought. Those were the next words out of her mouth, "My crowning glory."
I gave her a hug. What could I do? Sighing with this memory. Maybe a little weepy. They took her crowning glory--and her dignity.
I haven't been to a beauty salon in decades. My hair is long. Not as luxurious as it used to be. But I like it.
)
) yet?
