Visa and a Ponytail Tale

On Wednesday our group had the pleasure of visiting the consulate in Chicago in order to pick up our visas! They are currently only one month visas but we should be able to get them extended once we are in country (inshallah!). We have a flight booked and the fact that we are actually leaving is becoming much more real; we realized that finding a place to do laundry was much higher on the priority list and that we really need to eat up the leftover Chinese take-out in our fridge.

In addition, I started thinking seriously about how long my hair is. It is very long. I love my long hair! As a child I used to pretend that I had really long hair by putting a hooded jacket on my head so that the jacket part would hang down over my back, serving as perfect pretend hair. I automatically thought women were more beautiful if they had long, silky hair hanging down their backs. I think I subconsciously associated long hair with feminine beauty. And princesses. :-)

At about the age of 10 I decided to let my hair grow as long as possible. The progression is quite remarkable in my school photos. My hair got longer and longer and longer, culminating in the waist-length hair I wore during Jr. high. The summer after 8th grade I got my braces off and decided that to celebrate I would donate my very, very long hair to Locks of Love. I told my hair dresser that I wanted to donate an entire foot (a full 2 inches longer than the 10 inches required by Locks of Love, just to prove a point...) but I still wanted my hair to be as long as possible. This was, of course, not particularly difficult since I had waist-length hair!

In high school my hair hovered below my shoulders, sometimes several inches below. In college it got even longer, never reaching waist length, but definitely hanging halfway down my back. I really love the feeling and look of long hair. This summer, as I ran in the sticky, Iowa humidity, my pony-tail plastered to the back of my neck by sweat, I sometimes wondered what running with shorter hair would be like. As the YAGM orientation date got closer, I started worrying about caring for my long hair while abroad. It would likely be difficult to care for such long hair without a hair dryer, straightening iron, and army of products. YAGM emphasized that our year of service is about simplicity so I didn't want to bring the hair products with me, but seriously, I have long hair...

Yesterday, I went for a morning run and thought back to how good it felt to donate hair in 8th grade. It was amazing knowing that a child going through chemotherapy for cancer would be comforted by wearing my hair as part of a wig. It would certainly be simpler to have shorter hair while abroad, plus it would be a great way to celebrate our visas. As I started very seriously considering donating 10 inches of hair, I ran right by a clean and nice-looking hair salon. :-) I have run this same route a half dozen times during the time I've been in Chicago, but I had never noticed this hair salon before. I'm sure context caused me to notice what I had otherwise ignored, but I'm going to go ahead and say that God was saying, "Yup, good idea Sara. Why don't you make an appointment here." I whipped out my phone and took down the number. When I got back I made an appointment and two hours later found myself back at the hair salon, sitting in the chair.

The woman cutting my hair had never done Locks of Love cuts before so I was a little nervous. We had a very near catastrophe (well, not catastrophe... more like blunder) because she did not know that you have to cut the hair while it's still in the ponytail and she almost cut it loose. Thankfully I caught her before the mistake was made and we got it straightened out. Now my hair is 11 inches shorter! My ponytail is sitting on my desk upstairs in the guest house drying in preparation for being sent to Locks of Love today.

Me with my 11 inch ponytail

On an anthropological note, it's very odd to look at a ponytail of one's own hair when it is not connected to one's head. In my independent study last spring I read a fantastic book (Abject Relations by Megan Warin) that addressed the idea of abjection. Something is abject when it was once physically part of you, but when it is no longer part of your body,  you find some disgust in it despite the fact that it was once yours. For example, think about the spit in your mouth right now. Unless you've just finished running open-mouthed in a desert, it's likely that there is a rather large amount of spit in your mouth, hanging out. That's what it does and you're completely used to it. It's the temperature of your body. Now think about collecting that spit in your mouth and spitting it into a cup. Now imagine drinking it. Gross right? That's abjection. The spit is yours; you made it, it came from your mouth. But now that it has left your body and is hanging out outside your body, you find it disgusting. It has become abject.

I refuse to feel abjection toward my ponytail. I made it. I grew that hair, I brushed it, I washed it, I conditioned it. I made sure to get regular haircuts so that it wouldn't have split ends. I curled it, straightened it, dried it, braided it and ran with it stuck to the back of my neck. The end of that hair has been with me for a long, long time! That hair is a part of me even though it is no longer connected to my head. It is beautiful (if I do say so myself! :D ) and I still love it. The fact that it will be added to other ponytails in order to make a beautiful brunette wig for a child who needs it makes that hair even more beautiful.

So here's to a visa in hand, booked flights and my beautiful ponytail going in the mail today! Mazel tov!