the land of the scalp

The thing with working with people is you get what they get. I have dodged the lice bullet for over a year now. The boys I take care of seem to rotate them on a far to regular basis. I try not to think about it too much. They do a special hair wash, they have there linens cleaned and then a few days later they are back again. It seems like this has been the way of life for a while now. I always tie my hair up and am conscious of being too close to their heads. It was only a matter of time. I woke this morning, my first real day off in weeks, with a raw throat that wouldn’t let me get back to sleep. I went into the bathroom and decided to brush my hair thoroughly. It isn’t as easy as one would think. My hair goes down beyond my bra now. It is curly and it is very thin. It dreads often and it doesn’t like brushes. If I were to brush it every day I wouldn’t have time to ever leave the house. So those spare few hours every few days comes in handy and today was the day I was going to dig in. After a few minutes of brushing I looked down to see little bugs swarming the bristles. My throat clenched. It was nine am. Nothing is open in this country at 9 am on a Sunday. I got dressed and told a still sleeping D that I was off to find a rinse. With each step around town I felt my head was electric with bugs. I have psoriasis on my scalp so I am normally itchy but all of a sudden I had visions of larva and egg laying and I almost lost my mind. It was a frantic walk.

Two hours later I sat perched on a chair in our living room. D proceeded to pull egg sacs of my hair kissing my cheeks every now and then. Then, as if some comedic moment from the ether, D exclaimed.

“Oh! You have a grey hair!”

We plucked it so I can stick it in my memory box. My first grey. It made the rest of the lice picking, combing and rinsing seem small. I have entered into a new phase. I remember when my mum got her first grey. It seems significant.