What’s in a hairdo?
MOTHERLODE
Forget man buns; my kid has flow.
Ari, 21, has always kept his hair clipped down short. From about age five, he’d hop in the hairdresser’s chair and ask for a Number 2. I’d ask each time if he’d perhaps like a style; he always said no. And so it went, a Number 2 year in and year out and my darling son looking like someone who had just been released from prison. Today, my son has boy band hair. He doesn’t call it that, but when I saw a boy band on TV recently, I realized that’s what it was. The hair on top of his head is high and swirly like a wave waiting to be surfed; he has hair that requires no product and he’s unselfconscious enough about his looks to believe it happened by accident. A friend patiently explained to me that this hair is called “flow.”
He keeps a hat on it most days so I hadn’t realized how long it had gotten until recently.
In anticipation of a trip we were all taking, he and his girlfriend Taryn went shopping to buy him some respectable clothing. It was to be a work trip for me, and I’d told him there would be dinners where he couldn’t wear shorts and flip flops. Taryn sent me photos as he tried things on, and in one he had hauled off his cap to reveal the full cockatiel.
It had a kind of Elvis quality to it and when I later said so, they both smiled politely. In that moment I understood what it will be like to be the oldest person in the world.
Dressing for dinner the first night of the trip, Ari came into my bathroom desperately looking for something. “I have to do something with it,” he said. The glacier of hair looked rather cute, but did indeed clash with the button-downed look of junior executiveon-vacation that he’d settled on. He hauled a comb through it, and tossed on a little spray for good measure. It calmed down, though at the cost of that famous flow. I told him he looked very nice.
A colleague of mine met him 10 minutes later and said he looked like Mitt Romney. He proceeded to introduce him as The Young Republican for the rest of the evening.
Ari looked horrified and told me he was getting his hair cut. It’s not often you can be Harry Styles one minute and Mitt Romney the next so I told him to embrace flexibility.
Back home, he came rummaging in my room one night. “I need a hair thingie,” he said, poking around on my bedside table. I handed him a hair elastic. “Yeah, that, thanks.” He left the room. A minute later he returned with his hair pushed into a fountain sprouting from his forehead. “You look like a unicorn,” I told him. “Taryn told me to wash my face. She said you put your hair in a ponytail to wash your face.” I could hear Taryn giggling in the next room. I’ve become accustomed to living with girls now, with Pammy and Taryn ushering in a wave of femininity and detail that was previously missing. I dress more like my sons most days, and I’ve been dulled over the years by things like Number 2 haircuts.
My mom never cared how we cut and coloured our hair — or at least she never admitted it — though my father used to sputter. I learned a lot from my mom; it’s just hair, and I actually like Ari’s Elvis hair.
Go with the flow.