I Should Have Braided My Daughter’s Hair
White mom, Black hair, and the human need for ritual and connection
My daughter was born with a full head of hair, jet black and straight, which protruded from her head at various endearing angles. Everyone who saw her in her newborn days said, “Look at all that hair.”
Her hair stood in stark contrast to my thin blonde curls. It also stood in stark contrast to the gleaming bald head I’d been born with 31 years prior.
Eventually the hue of my daughter’s hair softened into a rich brown and the strands contracted into curls, as we knew they would. For the offspring of a Black man and a curly-haired white woman, straight hair would have been genetically inconceivable.
Her father and I bathed her every night on the kitchen counter, and though she was always a bit apprehensive about the water, it was a ritual we cherished. We dimmed the lights in a futile attempt to inspire sleepiness, and I sang silly songs while I worked through her curls. They were soft and yielding between my fingers.
The baths cleaned her but did nothing to calm her. It would take at least 20 to 25 laps around the block, each lullaby sung with an increasing tenor of desperation, to finally coax her to sleep.
