Blondie

Dear Reader,

I beg that you grant me a small interlude to discuss hair.

Behold this glorious photograph from the 1980s. Regard the most patient dog ever to walk the earth looking straight into the camera as if to say, “Why is this small human treating me like a horse?” Perceive the small human not looking anywhere close to the camera, riding the poor defenseless dog. Call your attention to this human’s hair. That, my friends, is blonde. Maybe a slightly dirty blonde, but she blonde. That child is me. I was born blonde.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with brown hair or red hair or black hair or no hair. If you want your hair to be green and gel it up into spikes all over your head, blessings upon you. Do as you please. But I was born a blonde and am deeply offended by the way my hair has turned over time to become more of a non-descript brown. Brown hair can be truly beautiful, but my hair is not auburn or chestnut, it’s just brown. When I look back on photos of myself as a child with naturally golden locks, it makes me sad.

My blonde hair was one of the things that made me feel connected to the Scandinavian part of my heritage. I am a true northern/central European mutt: Scottish, Irish, English, German, and Swedish. From all of those backgrounds, there aren’t very many cultural things that stuck. When I hear Scotland the Brave on bagpipes my heart does flutter and I instinctually turn towards Edinburgh, bow down, and weep. But beyond that, the main cultural things that passed down through the generations are Swedish traditions that came through my grandmother.

Grams was 100% Swedish and, having lost both her parents at the age of 19, I know it was important to her to talk about our Swedish heritage and pass down those traditions. We celebrated St. Lucia’s Day on December 13th each year. Our traditional Christmas Eve dinner is Swedish meatballs (which, sidenote: the Ikea Swedish meatballs are legit - definitely have the right flavor, in case anyone was wondering). There are a couple of Swedish words that we use occasionally in our family vernacular, none of which I know how to spell, but I know what they mean. My mom has multiple Dala horses decorating her living room (which I intend to steal one of, but don’t tell her that). And the only kind of pastry beyond pie crust that I have ever made is a Swedish puff pastry, which is really delicious and almond-y and goes wonderfully with coffee.

I take pride in these little Swedish traditions that live on, but I will admit I struggle to feel connected with any of my cultural backgrounds. At the core I am an American. I don’t see that as a bad thing, but I do wish I felt a deeper bond with my heritage. And thus we come back to the blonde hair. Both of my maternal grandparents, my mom, and my uncle are all blondies and all mostly or entirely Swedish. I always wanted to be part of their towheaded club and for a while as a youngling I was because, I’ll say it again, I WAS BORN BLONDE. It is arbitrary, I know, but in middle and high school when my hair started to come in darker I felt less and less like a true Swede, which is how I wanted to feel.

In adulthood I have, of course, taken back control over my hair color and attacked using chemical warfare. In other words I get my hair highlighted now. When I leave the salon with my restored blondie status all feels right with the world, even though I know that my hair will slowly grow in and be back to brown in no time. It doesn’t matter, because having a little bit of blonde in my hair, even just on the ends that have grown out, makes me feel better. But many is the time that I look in the mirror and wish that I was still naturally blonde.

I started seeing white hairs come in on my scalp in my early thirties, just one or two along the temple on the right side of my head. Now on the high end of my mid-thirties there is what I would call a full colony of white hairs that grow in on the right side of my head. The left side, with the exception of a few stragglers, remains primarily dark. This is a phenomenon I will never understand, but I like to imagine that if I let my hair grow out naturally and stop highlighting it that I would eventually have a multicolored head, split down the middle much in the fashion of Cruella De Vil. One half dark, and one half white. This, I think, is the only thing that would make me stop highlighting my hair. It would be pretty freaking sweet to naturally look like a cartoon character (although please rest assured that I would never hurt a puppy or wear a fur coat made out of puppies).

It’s just hair, I want to tell myself. It doesn’t matter what color it is, or how thin it is, or if it all falls out. I would still be me and life would go on. But it feels so integral to how I feel about myself and how connected I feel to my Swedish heritage. At the end of the day I know it doesn’t matter, but truly, when it comes to hair, I want nothing more than to say that I am a blonde and to not feel like a liar.

This is my truth. And dammit, I was born a blonde.