two for one hair

Hair is part of our identity, in some ways it sheds light as to who we are, giving those who see us a glimpse of our personalities.

My daughters are biracial and have the hair to prove it. Not black, not white, but both at the same time. It's two for one hair.

Like myself at one time, if you have never had experience with biracial hair, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'll try to explain. My daughters became my daughters a couple of years ago. This brought on a crash course in biracial hair. Not only was I clueless about biracial hair, but they came to me with really neglected two for one hair. It was a hair-o-ing (sorry, couldn't help it) experience.

Two for one hair comes in many varieties. For example, my youngests' hair is super fine (the white part) but very curly/kinky (the black part). My oldest has thick coarse hair that is frizzy and real big (more on that later). Before I became their Mom, life's circumstances had them living with a female relative for a while that, shall we say, didn't really wanted to be bothered with things like hair. This meant they had long haphazard braids that had been in their hair for quite some time and knots were growing between the scalp and the braid.

When meeting this hair for the first time, I was confused, intimidated and clueless. So off we went to a local hair braiding establishment. The owner took a look at their hair, then gave me a serious lecture about allowing their hair get to this point. Realizing I was at her mercy and deciding anything I said at this point would have sounded like a lame excuse, I meekly asked if she could help and that I would do a better job moving forward. Sure she could help, for a price. So for a couple hundred dollars, lots of tears resulting from getting the knots out and EIGHT hours later, yep you heard right, we left with some beautiful braids.

The girls were happy but declaring they never ever wanted to go back there. Those ladies were brutal. I agreed, but after seeing them with their braids out and their hair, hmmm, natural, I was afraid, very afraid. My gosh what a lot of hair. I mean like miles of it, standing out all over hair. Clouds and clouds of hair. Kind of like this picture of Erykah Badu, but longer and not as healthy. Yep, I was very afraid.

So the girls were in great looking braids and a few weeks later, off we went to find another place to have their hair braided. The person was much more kid friendly, but refused to take their braids out, insisting I could do it before coming in. Sure I could.... It only took a mere four hours then we would show up and no one would be there who could braid....

So we began a hair journey. A quest if you will. Each new person lectured me about what I was doing wrong. Seems I wasn't doing anything right. Each person recommended something different from the last person. One woman, a customer in a salon, actually yelled at me that I would make them endure braids without first putting a perm in their hair. Huh?? A perm? Look I grew up in the 60's and 70's and personally experienced more than enough perms. Home perms at that. Why in the world would I want to put something on their hair that would ad to the big frizzy look we already had? Turns out a perm in the black community means to relax hair instead of curling the hair. More confusion...... Oh boy. So we relaxed their hair with no noticeable difference except to the wallet.

So we entered the next hair phase. I became very defensive and irritable about hair. Never wanted to discuss it and put off each trip to yet another a new hair salon longer and longer. I began to visualize the girls with easy to manage short hair. I put a few hints out there that fell on deaf ears. Their dad looked at me as if maybe I had lost my mind. I could see I was alone on this one.

Then one day I stopped in the salon at WalMart to buy conditioner (I know I shouldn't call it a salon at WalMart, but couldn't think of what else to call it) and the lady who sold me the conditioner was black. I took a deep breath and asked if she braided hair. No, but she knew someone who did. We started talking and she convinced me to let her relax it, that maybe they wouldn't need braids. I told her she shouldn't say anything until she saw this particular hair, that it was real big two for one hair. She just smiled knowingly and told me to bring them in.

Now we have a hair angel who, in my eyes, accomplished a hair miracle. Beautiful, straight, shiny hair for my oldest and soft curly ringlet hair for my youngest. They have learned to take care of it and style it different ways. For the first time in their lives they love their hair. They used to tell me they wanted hair like mine. Now they never say it.

But you know the biggest miracle of all? I am no longer afraid. Nope. The hair angel has me using products that work. I even blow dry it out for them and put relaxer on the new hair as it continues to grow. This tale actually covered almost a year of our lives. It was quite a learning experience, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Click on the link below to watch a video about biracial hair. I found it on a blog I read: My One Love Life written by Elizabeth who writes about her interracial experiences.

http://lab.wgbh.org/open-call/bi-racial-hair