It is and always will be a universal practice among women my age to go undergo multiple layers of trauma and decide to do something stupid with their hair just to feel something; the burn in the scalp, the thickening of every strand of hair as it fries to total dryness, the tangle in every stroke of the brush.
It was almost two weeks ago when I found myself in my room rubbing the soft blue goo in my hair to bleach it in an unfamiliar blonde so I could dye it to a candy-like lavender shade. Of course it turned brassy the first try. Beyoncé’s “Blue” was playing on my laptop; I had it on shuffle on under Beyonce’s discography because it was, I internalised, gonna be a me-time that should be soundtracked with hits telling me that I am running the world, wearing my freakum dress.
“We can last forever,” Beyoncé croons, while her daughter, Blue Ivy, cameos for a small part in the end. While I was slathering my already dead hair with the bleach solution filling up my room with the smell of chemical funk, I can’t help but think back on the one thing I wish shared with my mother, who went away when I was young.
There had been a million of moments I’d seen between a mom and her kid; on the train ride to work, waiting in line at the grocery store, walking down the sidewalk. But I recently, once again, came back to the desire of her fingers brushing through my hair as she combs it to a nice, smooth fix. I used to have curly hair then, even wavier than it is today. As a child I hated how it looked, because my classmates all had straight, thin hair. In disbelief I found myself laughing at the thought of me wanting for my mother to comb my hair again, just this once. A connection I was deprived of for the last 13 years.
I am not kidding when I say I remember all the times she fixed my hair at the quiet stillness of the morning, the sun not yet around before the school service picks me up. She’d wake me up, prepare my bath and breakfast and then proceed to dry and comb my hair, then tie it into fancy braids with these pink fluffy hair pins she bought at a tiangge. This is how I will remember my mother, erasing with effort the pain and trauma.
The months before she left, I made it a point to always want to stare at her face, and memorize every outline because I was afraid to forget how she looked like. It was a hard feat for a nine-year-old to endure. But because I had this (bad) instinct about her leaving, I did everything I could to be with her, to feel her everywhere. Somehow, back then, I’d known she’ll have other plans—plans that did not involve me and my dad, plans that did not involve her combing my hair everyday.
Growing up I did not have a hard time, that’s what I always told myself. I was too strong for a kid whose mother had just flew across the globe and made promises. I was too strong for a kid, that I forgot how to be a kid. Every waking hour for me was picturing that one classmate I had whose mother went to school every lunch time to bring her food. Sometimes I’d see them go straight to the church beside our school in the afternoon. I used to follow them, and just stare at the mother. I never imagined that it was my mother and me. I always just thought how this mother endured staying behind for a kid.
I developed a sense of self, and learned a handful of things from women staking their claims in the world. Women becoming leaders, writers, teachers, lawyers, activists. Women becoming mothers. Women who refuse to become a mother. I’m still not as adept to how women should make decisions in a society so built around the practice of complicity but I made it a point to just go about telling everyone that maybe being a mother wasn’t my mother’s destiny. And as a woman of her own, she did everything she can to get away from that job that so weighted her down.
I recently watched “20th Century Women” by Mark Mills. It talks about three different women who have differing ways of surviving the last dregs of the 70s, getting educated by feminism—which was then still a ‘new thought’—and talking about menstruation on the dinner table with men. It was and still is taboo to do so but the scene made me happy and seen.
In the movie, the three glaringly different women break apart every aspect there is when it comes to moving on—city to city, person to person, and from an old logic to new opinions. I’d like to think that this was when I fully understood what really happened, what really came to my mother: she became a woman, and in becoming one she had to run for another desire.
The clinching moment was when the pre-adolescent character, Julie, ran away from home, from her mother whom she does not have a relationship with, who never talks to her despite her being a psychiatrist herself. I told myself maybe I have it better than her because not having a mother growing up was better than having her live with you but never forming something solid between you two. But I’m wrong to assume that. Because we may be on the same path of womanhood, we may have taken it on ourselves to be persons of our own upbringing, but the tenderness of a mother will always be yearned for.
I have already forgiven my mother. We talk constantly online. But I will always feel this space, this wide gap between us that I cannot seem to jump over, because I never grew up with her. My step mother, who is sweet, loving and loves me like I’m her own, may be on the same page for me. I’ve been growing with her for six years (and counting) now. We’ve formed a strong bond, and we know each other’s quirks. She calls me out on my bullshit, mother style, and I love it. But I (unfortunately, on all levels) also feel a space between us, a door I refuse to open, a conversation I refuse to engage with.
Maybe I’m not meant to be someone’s child, except for my father. Somehow all the women in our family who tried to reach out to me growing up, I turned down. I was polite, I was accommodating, I accepted their heartfelt sinigangs and hand-me-down clothes. But I always turned down their warmth, rejected them an access to my heart. Was this caused by the impactful leaving of a woman in my life? I still can’t decide. But I always found it hard opening up to people trying to be a parent to me. To people who have tried to be a parent to me, including my step mother. But she understands, and loves me the same.
Turning 23, I never thought I’d ask these questions, and ruminate so much on the years I held my own hand, the day I got my first period and not knowing what to do. (I was too shy to tell my dad. So I went to nearest sari-sari store and bought the first sanitary napkins I saw displayed on the grills.) I turned out okay, combing my own hair. I may have failed it when I decided to bleach it and basically fry it to death. But I’m glad I did because I am committing to it. I know I am.
I keep wondering what I’ll be like once I become a mother. But it only ends up to me getting scared, fearing the decisions I have to make. What if I end up walking away, therefore leaving my child so conflicted just like me? But I’ve been so tired and out of breath for the last 13 years now that I know I’ll never stop holding my child until the day I die. There might be roads I have to walk thought, but I thought I’ll never take them unless my child is with me.
I might not become the best mother. But maybe I’ll be good at committing to it.
In “20th Century Women,” one of the characters get the harrowing news that she might not be able to bear children because of what the cancer did to her cervix. It made me cry, because I have the same fear, the same anxiety of being a woman but lacking the capability to get pregnant. Post-feminism thought tells us that women are not defined by their uterus. But it depresses me, the fear, because I might lose something again that I have lost before—companionship between two women.
And as I sat in front of the mirror destroying my hair follicles, I remember the first morning without my mother, the first time I combed my hair in the mirror, figuring out how I should part my hair. “The right side should be fine,” I thought, because I looked cute. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it only took my two hands and a pink comb, already greying on the sides.
Now I part my hair in the middle. I'm maintaining bangs now. Because I am allowed to leave behind something, I allowed myself to look new, to look different.
Because I allowed mama to be herself.
