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"Hair" by Nina Daswani


I am a new mom, laying on the bed in my one-bedroom apartment in

Waikiki, sunlight and traffic sounds streaming in, marveling at my baby’s beautiful

hair – the brown curls that strangers stop me in the street to comment on – and

thinking about how much I love them. I think a part of the reason I love them is

because they come from me. This is not his father’s hair, but my hair. People always

say that he looks like a mini version of his father, but I know I am in there too, and

sometimes I want to scream at them, “He’s mine, too!” His father’s family attributes

everything in him to a relative of theirs. His long, graceful fingers come from a great-

uncle somewhere. They claim he will play the piano because of this uncle’s genetic

influence, not knowing that I played the piano, and if my son does too, perhaps it

will be because of me. Or maybe it will just be his own gift, not linked to any

ancestor. In later years, on every post I make about him playing sports, his paternal

grandmother will remind the world that “he comes from a long line of athletes on

his dad’s side”. Never mind the fact that I take him to the basketball clinics and

sporting events, his dad rarely making an appearance. His height is also a direct

result of his paternal great-grandfather, of course, with no mention of the fact that

all my dad’s brothers are over six feet tall. It is as if I was just a vessel for this perfect

product of their genetic gifts.

 

It’s surprising that he got my hair, because his father is African American,

and we expected his hair to be like his dad’s. But he has my hair: dark, curly, Indian

hair. The same hair I have chemically altered for most of my adult life. The same hair

I have raged against and fought with and forcefully transformed into straight,

smooth, silky strands. The same hair I have fried and relaxed and hot-ironed into

submission. I also recognize that this hair is my mother’s hair. It is not from my

father – the one who everyone says I look just like. It is from my mother, the one who

gave me her fierce intelligence and poor eyesight and hot temper. Maybe it is

because of our shared temperament that we had such a contentious relationship,

and why I was so terrified to have a girl of my own (a wave of relief washed over me

when the ultrasound technician told me my baby was a boy). I learned later that she

was terrified of driving, just as I am. Her favorite ice cream flavor was Jamoca

Almond Fudge. So is mine. She liked to wear obnoxiously bright colors. So do I.

Despite the rest of my family’s verdict that I was just like my dad, maybe I was more

like her than even I knew.

 

She didn't get to see me grow up and notice all the ways I am like her. And

she is not here to see me as a mother or to meet her grandson. She wasn't in the

delivery room with me or at the hospital, alongside all my son’s paternal

grandparents and great grandparents. She didn't spend the first month of his life in

this apartment with me, making sure I was fed, bathed, and cared for, while

teaching me how to feed, bathe, and care for him. But as I see her curly brown hair

on my sweet baby’s head, it occurs to me that she still managed to give him a gift, a

piece of her. And in him, in this gift, for the first time, I regard this hair as beautiful.

Yes, it is harder to brush and detangle and make “nice”, but it has its own wild

energy. Just as my mother did. Just as I do. And just as my son will. I cannot imagine

my son straightening his hair or trying to tame it as I have mine. In fact, I cannot see

anything about him that he should want to change. Yet I have spent so much of my

life doing just that to myself. Seeing myself in him, I feel more beautiful than I have

ever been.


Nina Daswani is a mother of one, living in Hawaii. She enjoys hiking, going to the beach, and playing with her dozens of cats.