no. 19: hairography

dear little leah, 

i'm a glee fan. for the most part. i watch it every week and, nerdily, wish all the performing choirs i was in in high school had been as cool as the glee club at mckinley high school. they replayed an episode this week called hairography, in which the glee clubbers used their hair theatrically. 

i'm pretty sure you could teach a class on hairography.

i didn't always think so. when you were born, your hair looked like it might have belonged to an aging man. thin, balding and nothing really on top except for a few scragglers. as your first birthday approached, i was giddy with excitement as the sides finally fit into two of the tiniest pigtails you've ever seen. throughout the next year, your hair just grew and grew. first on the sides, then on top, then on the sides again and then on top. 

the possibilities were endless. pigtails, ponytails, french braids, nubbies. oh, the glory! 

and the curls! they just did. not. stop. not too tight, but just perfect. it looked like i spent hours curling your hair into ringlets when your hair was down and went the extra mile and turned under the ends of your pigtails when it was pulled up. nope, that just happened magically. 

and then the thickness. little girls just don't have hair like that, leah. yours is already thicker than the locks on the heads of most of my adult friends!

and the SHINE. oh, your hair just shimmers. and it's soft and flowing and bouncy and beautiful. 

can you tell i love your hair? i have thick hair, yes. and it's partially curly, yes. but that's part of the problem. my hair is only partially curly, so if i just get up and go i look like a zombie from michael jackson's thriller video. i have to either straighten it or curl it...or straighten it and then curl it. takes a lot of time, leah. but not your hair. most 'dos can be done in two minutes or less {pending your cooperation and lack of wiggles}. 

so that's my memory for today. your hair. it's been a fun thing for me throughout the past few years to try new things and be a little part in making it beautiful. and it's something that hasn't really changed. a lot of things were taken away from you in the past year, but your hair wasn't. it just grew and and grew and became even more beautiful by the day - just like you. 

i love you, little leah. 

love, 

mommy