It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s Super Baldy!

My husband is handsome. And I know you think I’m prejudiced because I married him and all, but he really really is. He has this great jaw line, and perfect creamy skin and these eyes that are this amazing green that is golden and shimmery and glittery all at once. He has broad shoulders and these big arms that give the best hugs. He has leg muscles naturally that soccer players work their whole careers to get. And he is bald. Down to the nubbin, has to put sun block on his pate, bald.

It’s a good Andre Agassi bald he’s got going, decided to sheer down his hair before his Poppa’s hairline caught up to him. He has no unfortunate dents or ridges in his skull. No King Kupa action. Just a lovely smooth head. I enjoy touching it. Soft. Smooth. Sometimes fuzzy. On a good day I can check and make sure there is nothing in my teeth in the reflection. No, no. Just kidding, honey. ;-)

When our daughter was born her head resembled his. A lot. There was a nice layer of strawberry blonde peach fuzz, but overall not much hair there. There were several jokes made at his expense. How she resembled her Mommy in her face, but her head was all Daddy. How he could be sure she was his because they shared a hairline. It bothered him some but I was happy because her head DID look like his and he does in fact have an awesome head.

Slowly. Very very very slowly her hair came in. She had her first haircut in August at almost 2. She didn’t really need one but I heard once that if you cut off the baby fuzz the real hair will grow in more quickly. So we took her to one of those fancy shmancy $20 haircut joints and after a lollipop, bubbles and a tv show involving dancing scissors she lost her baby fuzz and was ready to become a hair woman.

We had to go in once in November for a little bang trim (which mysteriously also cost $20) but this Sunday we took her in for a REAL haircut. Her hair is blonde and thick and lovely. Her bangs were growing into her nose and the back was looking very similar to a shaggy dog I once knew. So $20, a lollipop, bubbles, a tv show (about a dancing comb this time) and she was set. But that’s not all. You see, for $20 we got a haircut, a lollipop, a tv show about a cracked out comb…and pigtails. Beautiful sweet, cute, just slap that head on a box of baby food and I’ll buy a case, pigtails.

I’m not an outwardly emotional woman. I don’t cry. Not at funerals. Or when I stub my toe. Or when we had to put our cat to sleep. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t get a little misty at the freakin pigtails.

Not because it was sad. Or because it meant she was growing up. Maybe because she was so gorgeous. But most likely because I knew that I would never be able to recreate the pigtails that the gifted woman crafted with my daughter’s hair.

Ironically enough, this moment of joy and hair growth that we have been waiting for since birth would lead Miss Rapunzel to the discovery of one of her mother’s biggest faults. Heartbreaking though it may seem, I can not do hair. Not my hair. Not my Barbie’s. In 8th grade my mother bought me a crimper and that was too complex. My husband has to braid my challah. I have a serious condition.

So this is why I believe my stale tear ducts activated at the sight of the pigtails. And they were right to as the next morning the girl formerly known as Baldy started to cry when she saw her bows laying lifelessly on the crib mattress. I knew the jig was up-she would now know her Mommy lacks a talent found in Mommies everywhere. And just as I was seriously thinking about taking her back to the shmancy haircut store to reproduce the pigtails (what’s another $20?) my husband walked in the room to see what was up.

In a flash he saw the problem, grabbed a brush, a bottle of detangler and the bows and redid our daughter’s pigtails. Perfectly. The loops were even and straight. The hair was neat and combed. I stood there in shock and awe and I believe fell in love with him all over again.

My husband USED to have hair. Hair was such an important force in his life that he says when he drives with the windows open he can feel the hair blowing in his face, like a phantom limb. So I don’t know why I never thought to ask him how far his abilities as a hairdresser reached. Because of him my Little Miss Perfect won’t know her mommy is Little Miss Imperfect for a while longer. And I do so enjoy having one person in the world thinking I am perfect. So thanks to my Handsome Hairless Hero, I’ll enjoy my limited perfection in her eyes a bit longer…until she asks me to take her someplace that involves highway driving. Yikes.