Papa's Education as a Single Dad of Teenaged Daughters Commences

A couple of weekends ago I was going through one of my typically hectic weekends-with-the-kids in which I scramble around trying to get time with each one of them while also getting them properly dispatched on their various social errands. Late Sunday afternoon I was working my way through my to-do list, which included (a) dropping Merry off at a youth group event at her church, (b) getting my hair cut (already postponed about a month beyond reason), (c) ferrying Anya to Walgreens to pick up her medicine, (d) picking Merry back up after the youth group event ended, and (e) picking up Sean and Kegan from their friend Cameron's house, a task complicated by the fact that I didn't know where Cameron's house was exactly and still hadn't gotten the call from Sean to give me directions.

No, no, no need for pity, I'm used to this stuff.

I dropped Merry off, Anya and I got the prescriptions, and I raced off to the little $4-men's-haircuts barbershop to which I habitually, albeit infrequently, resort, but which I was afraid was about to close since it was right at 5:00 already. I was relieved to find that they were scheduled to stay open until 6:00. Anya and I walked in and sat down to wait my turn. And then Anya informed me that she wanted to get her hair cut.

Now that was a bit of a surprise to me because (a) she's very proud, and rightfully so, of her long hair, which (b) had not been cut since she set foot in America two years ago. But she had enough of a balance in her checking account to cover it. (Since she was over 18 and therefore not included in child support payments even while she was living with Dessie, I paid extra child support directly to Anya to help cover expenses that I knew Dessie wouldn't be able to help her with, such as clothes and...well, haircuts.) Actually at the time she had a ton of money in that account because I had temporarily misplaced the debit card for my main account, and had transferred a big chunk of money into Anya's account because I still had the debit card for that one. But even allowing for the fact that most of the money was really mine and not hers, she had enough to get her hair cut if she wanted to. So, sure, fine with me.

Now, Anya knew how she wanted her hair cut. Only, she only knew it in Russian. She informed me confidently (in Russian), because generally speaking she has confidence in her papa's competence, "Papa, I want a 'ladder' haircut."

But while her papa may be competent in many fields, the designation of young ladies' hairstyles is not one of said fields. I had no more clue than the man in the moon of what a "ladder" haircut might be, or of what English term one would use when requesting it from a Vietnamese hairdresser. It turns out, though, that hairdressers keep these big books full of pictures of different hairstyles, I presume for the sole purpose of assisting single papas of Russian-speaking teenaged daughters. Very thoughtful of them.

So Anya hunts through the books and finds something close to what she wants.

But this causes a new and disturbing development. Lots of the women in those pictures have streaks of blondeness in their hair, or, to use the English technical term that even I in my male cluelessness am able to remember, "highlights." (In passing, I have always wondered what would possess anybody to name a children's magazine after a beauty treatment? Very bizarre. Probably some sort of subliminal-message plot. But I digress.) And now Anya informs me that she would like to have blonde highlights added while she's at it.

I check my watch and silently tell myself, "Uh-uh, no way, gotta pick Merry up at 6:00 and I bet it takes a lot longer to do a woman's hair than my four-dollar haircut's gonna take." But, you know, I don't want to be unreasonable. So when the lady right in front of us finishes with her customer and looks at us, I ask her, "Do you have time to put blonde highlights in her hair?"

The hairdresser looks at her watch and, to my surprise, says, "Sure, I have time." I silently observe to myself, "Wow, I figured that would be a major undertaking...guess you learn something new every day." So I tell Anya, "Okay, fine, go ahead." Her face lights up with a smile so big it almost forces her eyes closed, and she settles, still beaming, into the chair. And since just at that time one of the male barbers pops over to ask if I'm ready for my haircut, I tootle off to the other side of the shop.

A few minutes later I'm done and I'm paying. I figure I'll pay for both of us since it's all coming out of Anya's account anyway: four dollars for me, and fifty dollars for Anya (the relative cost of hair care is Reason #337 I'm glad I'm a guy, Reasons #1 through #336 having to do with the number of months between age 12 and age 40). I add a ten-dollar tip because I've glanced back over in Anya's direction and she's still beaming and I appreciate the fact that the lady is making my daughter so happy.

I go back and sit down to wait for Anya to finish, noting with a bit of surprise that the hairdresser appears still to be cutting hair; I would have figured she'd be doing the highlight thing by this point. I check my watch; yes, we do seem to be a bit behind schedule. Wow, they must have that highlighting process down cold.

My barber walks up and babbles something to me in heavily-accented English that I'm not paying much attention to, but he seems to be asking whether he's supposed to share the tip with the girl who's working on Anya's hair; so I tell him, "Sure, of course." He drops a five-dollar bill on the girl's workbench and walks off...and then I realize that he asked if I wanted him to "split" the tip with her -- which he has just done fifty-fifty, in the process trousering a five-dollar tip for a four-dollar haircut. This honks me off so much I decide I probably had better not say anything about it because there's a good chance I'll be intemperant in my remonstrations. Besides, the hairdresser is trying to ask me about the whole adoption thing and I don't want to be rude to her. Plus Anya, to judge from her general demeanor of delight, seems to be enjoying herself and I wouldn't want to dampen the party.

The hairdresser now goes to work on the highlighting. This process turns out to involve taking what seems to be pretty much one hair at a time, slapping dye on it, and folding in up in six layers of tinfoil, and then moving on to the next individual hair. I realize, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, that the reason the hairdresser has assured me that she has time to do this highlighting thing, is that she has every intention of staying at work late in order to finish, and that there is no way on God's green earth she's finishing by 6:00.

What's more, I still haven't heard from Sean, whom I was supposed to pick up (along with Kegan) at least an hour ago.

I excuse myself and step outside to try to figure out what to do. I check my watch: 5:45, and I'm due to pick Merry up at the church at 6:00. I stick my head back in and tell Anya I'll be back, and then I head for the church. The first few doors I try are locked but then somebody lets me in, and I make my way back to the youth area, where I discover that, even though it's 6:00, they're jamming away to praise and worship music with clearly no intent of stopping anytime soon. Apparently I had the time wrong and was supposed to be here at 6:30.

I head back for the hairdresser's, trying to figure out how in the world I'm going to find the boys. I can't think of anything other than to call the Williamses, where Sean and Kegan have been spending lots of their time since Dessie and I separated, to see if they know Cameron's number. I call, and one of the Williams kids answers, and to my surprise (and relief) she informs me that Sean and Kegan and Cameron actually never got around to leaving for Cameron's house and are still there at the Williamses -- and that house, I can find. I get Sean on the phone and tell him to expect me around 6:45, and by the time I hang up I'm pulling into the parking lot at the hairdresser's.

Anya is no longer in the seat where I left her. The hairdresser tells me that Anya is getting her hair dried and -- to my relief -- that "she's almost done." She sends me over to the back part of the shop where the big hair-dryers are (I didn't realize they still used those things, by the way), so that I can sit on a chair and talk to my daughter...though I'm not sure what conversation I'm supposed to have with a girl who has an industrial-sized hair dryer pulled down over her head and turned up on high. I wait patiently for a couple of minutes and then the hairdresser comes back and turns off the hair dryer.

But then she marches Anya over to a sink and starts to wash her hair.

I'm thinking, "What the heck?" In the first place, um, I realize I'm not an expert here, but wouldn't you ordinarily wash your hair and then dry it, not the other way around? And in the second place, does this mean...oh, great Caesar's ghost, it does. "She's almost done" didn't really mean she was almost ready to go -- it just meant she was almost done with the hair-drying stage, or, rather, since I presume they're going to have to dry her hair again now that they've soaked it so enthusiastically, she was almost done with Hair-Drying Stage One.

I start worrying that I'll be late for picking Merry up at 6:30.

We proceed back to the hairdressing chair where all this started. Anya has just gotten her first look in the mirror at the new 'do, and she is floating on air...and I have to admit it looks very nice. A very immodestly-dressed, but apparently good-natured, teenaged girl has settled into the nearby waiting area and is perusing those big books, which causes me to assume that she also speaks only Russian. But that assumption is proved false when she immediately strikes up a vigorous conversation with Anya and the hairdresser about how great Anya's hair looks, and what color dye Anya was using (there's some sort of number code, apparently, and this girl seemed to have committed most of the number code to memory). The hairdresser is chirpily explaining how Dye #10 goes perfectly with Anya's natural hair color and Anya is explaining why she wanted her hair cut the way she did and the immodest-but-well-meaning teenager is talking, with many exclamation points, about how well it suits Anya...oh, blah blah blah I am so not a part of this conversation.

But I wish you could see how happy Anya looks. I'm trying to remember when I've seen her this happy and nothing comes to mind. In fact I go out to the car and get my camera, and to Anya's momentary horror, and subsequent outraged amusement, I pretend I'm going to take a picture of her there in the hairdresser's chair. The hairdresser asks me some more questions about the adoption and how Anya came to live in America, and I answer them while Anya sits there, smiling, to steal one of Brother Dave's more vivid phrases, "likeunto a 'possum."

Almost done now. I'm just going to have to apologize to Merry for being late. But suddenly the hairdresser stops drying Anya's hair for a moment, looks me in the eye, and asks me a question I hadn't seen coming at all. I hadn't realized it was so obvious that, even though I didn't know anything about the whole hairdressing experience and was bored and mystified by it, still I was delighted to see Anya so happy. Also I sometimes forget that people who have not adopted children themselves don't understand how little love really has to do with biology. At any rate, the hairdresser stops what she's doing and asks me, with an air of wonderment:

"So how is it possible for you to love her as much as you do?"

All I could say was, "She's my daughter." And I felt like that pretty much said it all -- or at least, if you couldn't understand it from that, then I wouldn't be able to make you understand it even if I spent a week trying.

Finally, at 6:35, the hairdresses pronounces herself finished. I leave an extra five dollars to repair the damage done by the barbarous misallocation of my original tip, and we hustle out to the car and race to the church...where, to my astonishment, the party still shows no sign of slowing up. Maybe it was supposed to go to 7:00? I'm late for picking up Sean and Kegan now; so Anya and I buzz over to the Williamses' and get the boys, and we head back for the house, and just as I'm dropping them off the phone rings: Merry, saying, "Dad, you need to come pick me up." Believe me, kid, I'm tryin', I'm tryin.'

So, in the end, it all got done, though not because of my mastery of organization and planning. And I now know much more than I did when I started about what it's like to get your hair done when you're a twenty-year-old girl rather than a forty-year-old guy who gets four-dollar haircuts. I presume this new knowledge may someday come in handy.

And I wound up with a very, very happy daughter; so I'll close this post with a picture: