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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Torn to pieces
Brothers and sisters in foster care, rarely adopted together, are routinely split and scattered, never to see each other again.
By Nell Bernstein
[02/16/00]

Beware of "women's culture"
Francine Prose issues a stern warning in the New York Times about market-driven pablum for women -- who are as silly, powerless and narcissistic as a gender can get.
By Jennifer Foote Sweeney
[02/15/00]

War of the dust-busters
Cheryl Mendelson may have written "Home Comforts," but my grandmothers could out-scrub her any day.
By Pamela Gordon
[02/15/00]

Dear Jon; Love, Jon
In which a young Romeo pens verses of true love -- to himself.
By Jonathan Poletti
[02/14/00]

Subway love
Gone is the stench of urine. Into its void rushes a whiff of pheromones.
By Jori Finkel
[02/14/00]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

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I spend Friday nights on a cracked leather loveseat combing out three damp heads springing with waist-length, freshly conditioned spiral curls. While we watch vapid teenage television shows, I spray detangler and separate trying-to-dread locks and then braid the long hair for the night.

I take my daughters' hair very seriously. They are part me -- Swiss and French-American -- and part their father -- Creek, African and Irish-American. They are women of color, girls with burnished gold skin and black eyebrows. In our family, and in the black community where much of our family has lived, the care and maintenance of hair means more than just barrettes and ponytails; hair reflects pride and care, and neglected heads display a serious lack of mother's love.

Also Today He loves me, he loves me not Race was never an issue in my life -- until I fell in love. By Eleanor Stacy Parker All mixed up A Salon special report on multiracial America The last taboo Why won't Hollywood let Denzel and Julia do what comes naturally? By Charles Taylor Do the multiracial count? This year the Census Bureau will finally let mixed-race Americans tell the truth about their backgrounds. So why are civil rights groups upset? By Gregory Rodriguez "The stakes are a bit higher for us" The NAACP's Washington bureau chief takes the Census Bureau to task for its new multiracial categories. By Daryl Lindsey I was a guilty white liberal A failed interracial romance taught me that I wasn't part of the solution to America's racial strife, I was part of the problem. By Joan Walsh

I'm just grateful for conditioner. I recall pain from my childhood, when my mother combed my waist-length straight blond hair without creme rinse, which she'd never heard of. Let me put it this way: My bathroom looks like a salon sometimes, with frizz-ease, shampoo and leave-in spray.

During "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," I comb through my oldest daughter Gaila's hair. Hers is longest, of course, but also merely wavy when compared to the tighter curls of her sisters. However, after a long week of sports and sleeping, her kitchen needs work.

Most white women do not know this kitchen, the snarls at the nape of the neck. Many white women I know express shock that I spend this much time on my girls' hair. "I don't even think I technically washed my kids' hair until they were 4," someone once told me. Her children had wispy blond feathers that she just tousled with a washcloth. "Mine won't let me touch their hair," someone else said, and I studied the straight locks pulled back in a ponytail.

It is true that in the morning, the choices of hairstyle for my girls are endless, and we have to set aside some time if they want something special like a bun or braids. Then again, the women who don't have to do this miss out on hours of touching, talking and closeness. On school-day mornings, while I braid, twist or merely gather their hair into a ponytail, we go over spelling words, discuss the playground bully and choose something special for preschool share day.

Of course, those who don't spend the early morning styling hair have better hairstyles than mine, I'm sure, because once I'm done with the three beauty queens of curl, all I do with my own hair is stick my wet head out the window of the van on the way to work and call it blow-drying.

I remember the hours spent with friends, doing hair, touching, joking and being close. Back in high school typing class, my friend Vicky taught me to braid cornrow-style long before Bo Derek. Vicki had long, wavy, black hair, looked like an Egyptian queen, and she teased me about getting a perm. In college, I braided my hair, wistful for home, and even cornrowed for a friend, a linebacker on the football team.

After I was married, I spent hours in my mother-in-law's house, watching relatives and friends braid hair, laugh, watch movies, make lemon cake and talk and talk. They teased me about the perm I'd finally gotten, and one friend talked to me seriously about my coming child.

"One thing I hate in this world," she said, "is a white woman who won't learn to do her kids' hair. With the combination of his and yours, they're gonna have a lot. Don't let it get all nappy, and don't let it get all dry, and don't ever think it doesn't matter. Because it does."

In Washington, D.C., years ago, I met a biracial woman whose mother was German and father was black. Her mother refused to style her hair until someone rescued the girl and took her to a black beauty salon. I remember the hurt in her voice even then when she described it, and I thought about a mother's rejection reflected in tangles and neglect.

From the time I first bathed my oldest daughter in the kitchen sink, I was careful to comb out her perfect snail-shell curls, thrilled at her intent stare on my face when I fastened barrettes at her temples. At 2, Gaila's hair was past her shoulders, dark-brown ringlets that lightened to copper at the ends in the summer.

Delphine's hair was true black, wavier and thicker, a dense cloud of ponytail if we didn't moisturize. And Rosette's hair took the longest to grow -- she would sit in the bathtub next to her sisters and cry that she wanted her hair to touch her butt like theirs. Now that she's 4, it reaches the middle of her back, perfect spiral curls that have tints of gold and bronze.

Next page | I'm willing to be patient, because this is what we do