The long and the short of it

I'm sure that, try as I might, I've already given my daughter's future therapist plenty of fodder, but at least, at least! I've never hauled my daughter in to get all her hair cut off because her father fell in love with a waitress's Dorothy Hammill 'do at Denny's. It's a wonder I ever went out to eat with my parents again.

What brought on this sudden childhood flashback? My mom was here tonight, dropping off her granddaughter and checking on my post-op status, when finally the question that I've been watching her hold in all spring and summer finally burst from her lips.

"Are you growing your hair out on purpose?" she asks, a little urgently, and I manage not to laugh at her. What is it with my parents and their lifetime obsession with my hair?

"Yes," I say slowly, as she shakes her head. And somebody give me a dollar, because I did not say, and everybody else likes it, or the strip club requires it, or even, you think I just missed my hair appointments for six months?

But I do say, "and is it growing out of your head?"

And she concedes that it's not, and that thus it's not her business, that there's no earthly reason that she should care why I've decided to let my own hair on my own head grow longer, and yet, she can't help but have an opinion. Perhaps I should tell her that it's cheaper than therapy.

But really, while I'm thinking of it, I should warn my daughter, who has more hair than I ever have or will. "If you ever go eat with Grandpa and Grandma, and you get a waitress with really short hair, and Grandpa gets this look in his eye, 'Call home!'"