Day 306

I last had my haircut on November 9, 2019. About a month ago I checked my calendar to see how long it had been. When I’ve just had it cut my hair sits just above my shoulders, layered lightly. It’s coarse and wiry where it’s white. And dry but wavy, even curly on the inner layers, where it’s a nameless brown color. Which is all to say, it’s complicated. And I don’t get my hair cut often — I was just about to make an appointment during the second week of March when things started to really look bad — but it’s not a task I will willingly take on myself or hand off to someone in my household.

My hair is now halfway down my back. Long grown-out layers. Most of the time looped into a messy bunlike poof on the back of my head. Yes, know I could make an appointment. But there are so many places I haven’t gone and things I haven’t done in nearly 10 months and it feels vain to even consider such a step.

My hair first went white shortly after my father died suddenly and unexpectedly. A redundant phrase, I know. But there’s no other way for me to digest that he was there, and then, on Father’s Day (1999), he wasn’t. Sudden. Unexpected. My streak of stark white hair appeared within days. A Bonnie Raitt-like look that I often was complimented on. As if I was coloring the rest of my hair a nondescript blah color to show off my premature white locks. I was 26, and I went with it. When I’d pull my hair back in a ponytail the streak fell at the very back. In my mind that’s how my ponytail still looks from the back, though in reality the top layer is all white now. I’m nearing 50. I’ve never colored my hair.

Dad was 52 when he died. Not exactly healthy, though not near death as far as any of us who loved him were concerned. He had smoked for years and was pretty sedentary. Not exactly an optimist, though not as gruff and unapproachable as he could first seem to those on first impression.

That I am two years away from the age that he died seems impossible and like a kind of responsibility. To be aware of time. Of the end. And here we are with news of death literally tallied every day on every new site, sortable by region, age, ethnicity. Who will make it through the next two years, the year 2024 when I am to turn 52?

It’s all so grim. And also right there in front of us.

Some days my neck hurts because of the weight of my hair. And my head hurts because I didn’t sleep well. And my body hurts because I haven’t done yoga in a long time. And my heart hurts because my kids are missing so much. And it all feels like too much for too long with an end so questionable and so far off that somehow I can’t focus on even one thing in front of me.

But I get up and do the dishes. Add something to the grocery list. Text my sister. Sit down and watch a few minutes of whatever athletic competition is on TV. Knit a few rows. Take a deep breath. Make yet another meal.

My brain never ever stops. But I guess that’s the point. That’s the good. What we should all be focusing on. Our brains. How we are coping, growing, learning, changing or not. How we are being kind with ourselves and with each other so that we can not just survive this time but learn from it. So that when we can finally go to the hair salon we can look up into the mirror at the end and recognize ourselves, whether the cut and hair color is the same or whether we opt for a new look altogether.

This morning I read an essay about Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway,” and it made me want to reread that novel and “The Hours,” the novel by Michael Cunningham — author of the essay — based on Clarissa Dalloway’s story. The fact that these ideas and impulses continue to exist in me allows me to recognize the part of myself that has not changed since we have all been staying home. And even though it is difficult to read in the same way that I used to, I have both books within reach. They are there for me when I’m ready for them.