Riffly hair is my daughter’s expression. She often makes things up to describe feelings or how things look but riffly hair is my current favourite.
Like her mother, she has straighter than straight hair. Already, aged 6, she is aware that it is very straight and of course the grass is always greener, so she wants curly hair. She has been growing her hair now for a long time and now we just have to stick with growing her fringe out and she will be happy. Except that it isn’t curly.
A few weeks ago, I plaited her hair and as it was damp at the time, when I took the plaits out, her hair was wavy. She loved it. “It’s all riffly!” she declared.
This has been the topic of many conversations ever since and she wanted to know how she could have “riffly” hair all of the time. I explained that this would never happen but if she wanted it, she could try sleeping in plaits and this might help but that eventually the waves would drop out.
We tried it. With a little bit of hairspray, she had riffly hair and spent many happy hours throwing her hair around dramatically. By the end of the day however it was straight and we had one of those moments that can only happen with children when she was looking on the floor for her “waves that had dropped out”.
The thing with A’s hair is that it is exactly like mine. I hated having straight hair and spent years, lots of different appliances, curlers, plaits, rags and even perms (if anyone can remember perms!) to try to get my hair curly. The best result I got was a slight wave, even from a perm and now I am happy to accept the limitations of my hair. So watching this process start with my daughter is quite funny and takes me back to my teenage years. If she is anything like me, I think I have years of hair angst ahead of me.
In the meantime, here she is with her “riffly hair” before the waves dropped out.
