By Shanda Connolly
No one tells you when you become a mom that you become so many things, so much more than just a small person’s caretaker. For me, when my daughter’s hair had grown well past her shoulders at four years old, I picked up a side job as her hair stylist. She then developed a decisive preference to have her long, brown, wavy hair blown out sleek and smooth after twice weekly washes.
“I’m ready!” she calls to me when she’s done showering and seated on the vanity stool in our bathroom. There is the usual grousing over a few stubborn knots as I comb through her hair. Then, as I start the blow dryer, she watches me in the mirror, wrapped up in her white bunny-eared hoodie towel.
At first, I’m rushing. I have a million things to do, more work to finish, people I need to get back to. Then, as I feel her hair, I pause. I hold the blow dryer away from her, careful not to burn her, as I take each section and slowly pull the brush through the length of her hair as the wet strands become damp, then dry. She feels the sections I’ve dried, warm and smooth, with her hands.
“Mom, this part’s still wet!” She’s a stickler, too.
I dry the strands around her face, softly framing it. It is a sweet face with my husband’s big brown eyes, but with my nose, mouth, and chin. She is eight now. Despite all her complaining and my repeated requests for her to stop looking in the mirror and to turn her head this way or that so I can dry her hair, I realize this is a precious ritual. The day will come when I’ll lose this job and she’ll do this herself.
In these mundane moments, I believe she understands that she is loved and that she loves herself, as well. And after all, aren’t we entitled to like the way we look and know that it’s okay to take time to care for ourselves? Maybe it’s these little rituals that help fill the wells of our self-esteem that we can draw on during droughts of doubt. I want to tell her never to let someone tear her down, never to believe that she doesn’t deserve joy and success or that she can’t do something because she’s a girl. That she always deserves to be treated with dignity, that she never needs to be anything other than herself to be liked and, yes, that she is beautiful inside and out. But she wouldn’t be able to hear me over the blow dryer. And probably, she’ll need to learn those lessons for herself anyway.
When I finish, I bend down and smell the top of her head, the fresh grapefruit scent of her shampoo.
“Mom!” She grumbles again. “Why do you always have to smell my hair after you dry it!?”
I simply tell her, “it’s part of my job.”
Shanda Connolly is an attorney in Los Angeles, and her writing has appeared in Narrative, New York Times, Prairie Schooner, Ruminate, Mosaic, West Trade Review, and others. In addition, her flash fiction was selected as a finalist in 2021 in the Hummingbird contest by PULP Literature, and she attended a residence last year at Millay Arts.
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