That Day in Pictures - Short Hair/Long Hair

That's me 10 years ago!  I grew up with long, brown, stick straight hair.  I didn't do many creative things with it; mostly straight down and parted in the middle.  I grew up in the 70's after all and that's how we wore it until Farrah Fawcett showed us how to feather our sides and bangs.  When I went on a church mission to Chile, I went in for a cheap haircut, a trim really, at a beauty school and got my hair cut so poorly that I had to go to a professional who proceeded to cut it off and I left it that way, for the time being I thought.  When I came back to the States, my mother, who has very strong opinions and is pretty vocal about them, told me I should never wear my hair long again, that although I had thick, nice hair, I looked unattractive in it long. And this was the time of Sheena Easton and Princess Diana and everyone my age was cutting their hair really short.   I believed her because she's my mother, so I spent the next 25 years with short hair; pretty much the same style but all different shades of blond and brown.  I did make two very short lived attempts to grow it out but I couldn't stand myself while it was losing its layers and shape and my mother's words rang in my ears.  Around 2009 I was approaching my 50s and decided that my mother's opinion be damned (darned); I was in charge of my hair and I needed to see if I could pull off long hair.  I began the stressfully slow grow out process where you look ugly just about every day and people wonder why you have quit taking care of yourself until it becomes obvious what you are doing.  An interesting thing happened; the longer it grew, the curlier it became.  I now had curly hair!  How did this happen?  No one in my family has curly hair.

The unattractively yucky grow out stage selfie

Naturally curly hair as it's growing out - how could this be?  I have to use a flat iron now - jeepers!

My middle son Heath was on a two year mission while I was growing my hair out and when he returned home, after not seeing me for two years, and never with long hair while he was growing up, he was pretty surprised at the transformed person who was his mother.  And then I went to visit my own mother in San Diego and we hadn't seen each other for a couple years either and when she saw me she told me that she had always loved my long hair and couldn't understand why I had worn it short all those years.  I was stunned at her remark!  I repeated what she had told me several decades ago and she denied ever saying it!  Anyway.  When I was dating my husband Dan, he asked me, after seeing a picture of me with short hair, if I would ever cut it that short again.  I said probably not.  He replied "good, because I really like you with long hair ".  It's a good thing my mom agrees with him.  That's the story of short hair/long hair.  

Bippity!