Why Their Hair Is So Long

I hear a lot of comments on my boys hair.  It's true, the oldest one has only had one haircut and the twins have never had one. 

Many people tell me that their hair is beautiful, and that they understand why I don't cut it.  Other people don't like it and will tell me that I should cut their hair because "they are boys." 

 

Well, I suppose I should tell you a story, and then maybe you'll understand why I don't care about their hair being long.

 

About 9 years ago or so I moved in with my boyfriend now husband.  We rented a house from my cousin and we were in NEW love which is exuberant and joyful.   Shortly after we moved in together I had a gyno appointment with a new doctor.  I had been sent to him because I had a cyst rupture and had had an MRI and ultrasound done on the parts of me that were in agony that day.  This was my follow up visit.  At that appointment, Dr Feelgood casually told me about my "bicoronet uterus".   He mentioned that I probably couldn't have children, in fact most likely could never carry a child to term as I was a deformed freak who should be relegated to a circus act. 

Okay he didn't say that, but it's about how it felt.  I didn't know this doctor, have a relationship with him at all and here he was telling me that the reproductive future I had never even considered didn't exist.

I never wanted children, until they told me I couldn't have any.  And then my heart exploded in ache and loss......and devastation at what would never be.

 

I lay in bed for the next four years looking at the back of my husbands head many nights, looking at the dark curls wound tightly in his hair (if his hair gets any length on it, it's terribly curly), and I would have tears running down my cheeks over those curls.  All I wanted was a little boy with those curls.  I wanted to wrap them around my fingers, to bury my face in the scent of them.  I wanted to feel them against my cheek and brush them after a bath.  I wanted those curls to come to life and bring forward 23 chromosomes that were him and 23 chromosomes that are me and ensure that what we are continued in the world.  And I would pray, please, please please, could there be a miracle?  Could I please just have one baby?  Just one.  If I had just one, I knew he would be extraordinary. 

 

If you knew me then, you are probably surprised to hear me say that.  Because I would've told you, to your face, that no way did I want kids.  The husband I like to travel, we like to go on a moments notice and we don't have any great need to reproduce the world is overpopulated etc etc etc.  But in truth, in my heart, I was the girl lying in bed with tears running down her cheeks, unable to speak her deepest wish, because it wasn't ever going to come true.  Speaking it would just open the wound - so I kept silent and pretended not to have this hurt.

 

So now due to no technology or medicine, due to luck or God or whatever you want to attribute it to, I have three little boys.  And I love their curls.  Their hair lays in big, long ringlets that smell like love, and feel like an angels hair.   I will cut their hair.  Yes the oldest is in dire need of a cut, now that the first haircut has completely grown out.  But what you probably don't know is that when I look at those curls, those blonde and brunette ringlets framing three little faces with big blue eyes, what I am looking at is a prayer answered.  Pain absolved,  Emptiness filled.  Joy, brought to life.