Keira has lovely hair.
Correction: Keira has lovely hair when she lets me brush it.
I, on the other hand, do not have particularly remarkable hair in any respect. Yes, it’s blonde, but blonde with a little chemical help these days. If you gathered all my hair up into a ponytail, and did the same with my daughter’s, Keira would probably have more. It’s quite thick.
Naturally, this leads to problems. When I approach her with the brush in the mornings, she ups and runs away, as if I were pursuing her with a motley of torture instruments. Which I am, in a way, because I never get a good brushing in, and the knots of the days…weeks…before are never really worked out properly.
It usually results in a yelling match:
Karen: Keira, I need to brush your hair.
Keira: I don’t want to!
Karen (annoyed, and at wit’s end): Do you want me to go get the scissors? Because I will go and get the scissors and cut all your hair off if you don’t let me brush it.
Keira gives me a thunderous look, and eventually concedes to my will.
Now, I don’t like having to threat like that. I hate to, in all honesty.
[Because it is at that precise moment, when all I need is a hunchback, a missing top tooth, and a raggy shawl thrown over my shoulders, and I could be some sort of Dickensian villainess, all shrieks and threats; full of malevolence, due to her own tragic upbringing.]
So, come on, mothers of girls. How do you get to brush their hair? Do you resort to extortive lengths like I do?
