Brushing my hair at five was no easy task
Dads arms were as soft as non laboring hands pulling and twisting my head and neck to stay straight
A straight part meant everything
It’s too soft to stay styled so we gotta do this spook
He’d called me that since I was born off colored (nearly white) for a black girl
He line the middle part with stinky blue grease then condition the ends with petroleum jelly
Anything left in the comb or brush
He’d lump in his ashtray and burn right away
I’d always cry
Do you want birds nest for your hair
He’d always reply
Long time ago
Even before I was born
Little girls didn’t want their hair burnt
Wanted to save it or clog up the sea
Well one girl saved all her dying hair underneath her pillow
They lived by the equator so she slept with her window open year round
One day a swoop of birds came into town and claimed the perfect nesting place
Thing is there were so many birds after they used all the hair under the pillows
The rest of the flock rested in her hair
She could never get them to leave and now she never leaves her home because she’s home to the birds
If you burn your ends it gives your power back to the air to circulate through you again
If you don’t your hair will get so tangled it’ll resemble a birds nest
I don’t want no nesting hair
I’d cry and let him reply and finish braiding my freshly pruned pigtails
I can feel the pain of all that pulling. Ouch!
Unfortunate but necessary 😍😫
This poem resonated — especially because of all the brushing of little ones’ hair that I do! I often wonder how my common refrains will be understood by my little ones. 🙂
Jacob, I’m sure your girls adore you as I did my dad. Those tiny moments of wanting to be loose is what every.child experiences during hair care.
You know what? Those moments, now that he’s gone, forever allow me to remember the action of a father’s love.
As a teenager, young adult, and now adult woman, I know how important that bonding time is – how he could’ve been doing so many other things but sat with me telling calm stories so that I’d learn much more than a hair lesson.
Keep being a great dad sir
We used that blue grease – ultra sheen. Never burned my hair ends and so far so good – no birds nesting in my hair!
😍
I stopped the tradition as an adult
Learned a style that keeps it from shedding much
Some days though I wonder how honored I’d be for a mother bird to trust my hair
Or how crazy that bird would have to be to nest there
I kind of like the idea of a bird using my hair in a nest. Not so much using my hair as a nest.