{"id":7766,"date":"2013-08-27T18:34:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T23:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/?p=7766"},"modified":"2013-08-27T18:34:01","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T23:34:01","slug":"my-quinquennial-shorter-haircut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/2013\/my-quinquennial-shorter-haircut\/","title":{"rendered":"My quinquennial short(er) haircut"},"content":{"rendered":"

About every five years, I remove several inches of my hair from my head. It just happened again! <\/p>\n

I have always considered myself to be a “long-hair” person, having worn long locks until I had the courage to try a shorter cut at age 22. But now, I find that I am struck by a sudden, passionate need to chop off my hair roughly every five years. I can look back on my life and track the emotional landscape that surrounded these haircuts: The College Graduate (age 22), The Anxious Young Adult in Therapy (age 26), The Woman Grieving a Miscarriage (age 29), “The Mother of the Sticky-Fingered Baby”:\/news\/2008\/mama-crop\/ (age 33). And now, at age 38 ½, I’ve done it again, with a ridiculous amount of angst over an upcoming landmark: The Twentieth High School Reunion.<\/p>\n

\"Hair<\/a><\/p>\n

This reunion has been hovering in my mind for about a year and, embarrassingly, causing me to wonder constantly about my hair. My train of thought always ends up something like this:<\/p>\n

Should I keep my hair long?
\nShould I cut it short?
\nShould I cut it really, really short?
\nWhat would it mean if I cut my hair?
\nWhat kind of person am I?
\nHow am I different or the same as when I was in high school?
\nWhat does it mean to be 38 ½?
\nWhat does it mean to age?
\nAm I pleased with the way I am aging?
\nWho am I?
\nHow can I be my most authentic self?
\nDoes my most authentic self have short hair or long hair?
\nDoes any of this really matter?
\nGosh, am I really this vain?
\nWhy am I spending so much time thinking about my hair?<\/i><\/p>\n

You can see how it took me a little while to actually cut my hair.<\/p>\n

The funny thing is, I’m not especially worried about the reunion. I don’t want to impress anyone in particular or lose twenty pounds or anything like that. When I talked with my spiritual director about this (yes, it’s true, I had a good long talk with my spiritual director about my HAIR), she asked me, “How do you want be perceived by people at the reunion?” And, mostly, I realized that I just want to be myself and have some good conversations. <\/p>\n

Herein lies the difficultly with reunions. In this artificially constructed situation, one has a few hours to connect with old friends and acquaintances, to present oneself as an older (and perhaps wiser) person, and hope to come across accurately. I suppose my most fervent desire for this situation is to be 100% Ann Boyd, but how can I ensure this? I cannot. No wonder most people either drink themselves silly at reunions or skip the whole thing altogether.<\/p>\n

The final haircut decision came about suddenly, and with no real answers to the big questions. Last week, I just couldn’t take the long hair anymore. It wasn’t a conscious choice of being “short hair Ann” or “long hair Ann.” It felt more like being 41-weeks pregnant, that feeling of “get this baby (or, in this case, hair) disconnected from my body right now!” “Danielle”:http:\/\/www.celebritysalon.biz, my beloved hair stylist, performed the task expertly, taking cues from some of the “pictures”:http:\/\/pinterest.com\/annmboyd\/haircut\/ I showed her. My new ‘do does feel like 100% Ann Boyd — right now, at age 38 ½. I’m glad I like it, because it’s going to take awhile to grow out again!\"New<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About every five years, I remove several inches of my hair from my head. It just happened again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7766"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7795,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7766\/revisions\/7795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}