Pandemic hair and other signs of the times

Photo by Kate Tandy on Unsplash

My daughter is excited because my hair is growing out. She’s always hated my short hair. She’s been begging me to grow it into a bob for years, since she was a little girl, sidling up beside me on the couch, asking if she could do my hair, then getting frustrated because there was nothing to work with. She couldn’t gather it, or run a brush through it with long, comforting strokes, or secure it with bands or barrettes. Braiding was out of the question.

So, with the pandemic, she is elated now that my “sideburns” are growing out. Last night, she asked me to tuck the shaggy tufts of hair behind my ears. She actually shrieked with joy when I was able to, and they stayed.

She said, “Mom! Now you look like a woman!”

Thanks, honey.

My daughter is 18 now, a senior at Berkeley High School.

Of course, she is more of a floater now. She no longer attends school. There is no school. There is supposedly online school, but after a naked man zoom-bombed her first online class, there have been no more. She gets some assignments via email — a few worksheets and things to turn in from time to time.

But, there is no school. No cadence of school, no dressing for school, no applying eyeliner, no doing of the hair, no gathering of things. No lunches out with…