“Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair…”
Even for a girl who was supposed to be half black, my hair never made sense. Well, that and my skin color. The later could be explained away by the fact there was obviously some mixing between a white slave owner and my black ancestors—a common occurrence in the African American community in the U.S. My grandfather was rather light-skinned and his dad looked white in the only black and white photo I ever saw of him. Now that we’ve done DNA tests, I know the man who I thought was my grandfather was indeed half white.
My hair, on the other hand, was a different story. Hairdressers would often comment when I’d get my haircut on how thick my hair was. No, I’m not talking about having a thick head of hair, but each hair strand was thick. It wasn’t “black” hair nor was it white. I always thought my hair looked like one of those troll dolls with the blue hair that looks like he stuck his finger in a light socket. My hair was straight but frizzy. And I never knew what to do with it. If I stock product for “black girls” in it, it looked greasy. I was teased for trying too much to be black.
A few days after the shock of my life, learning I wasn’t half black and the man on my birth certificate wasn’t my biological father, my hair started to curl. Not thick ringlets but very distinct waves. I’d wanted curly hair when I was younger. I even tried a perm once. Just one time because the curl didn’t stick but the perm only enhanced my lightening hair look. Now that my hair hung in beautiful waves around my face, I wasn’t thrilled.
My newfound locks only exacerbated the feeling of dread I felt every time I happened to see myself in the mirror. My face was now a stranger’s face. I had no idea who I was inside and out. My reflection was no longer mine and I didn’t know who it belonged to anymore. It’s quite disorienting to look in the mirror and see someone you don’t know looking back at you. If I had to look in the mirror, I squinted at myself trying to blur the edges of who I saw because it wasn’t me anymore.
Growing up my dad wasn’t around. The few times I felt the loss of not having a dad weighing on me, I would compare pictures of him and myself trying to find any resemblance. Like I said earlier, I could explain my light complexion. I’d met plenty of other mixed kids like me who had light skin. And my hair, well I figured it was just confused, neither black nor white but something in between, a combination unique to me. But my face was another story.
I could never see my dad in my reflection. Now that I’ve spent a lot of time examining photos of people and their potential biological fathers, I’ve gotten pretty good at looking at a picture and spotting a resemblance. I look at the ears, specifically the earlobes as well as the shape of the eyes and chin. My mom is the only person I ever could see reflected in my face. After discovering my NPE status, I could still see her when I looked at myself in the mirror but wasn’t sure who else I saw. I hid from my own reflection.
After establishing Sam Rubinstein was my biological father, I was desperate for a photo. I reached out to my biological family and they suggested I search old newspaper articles for a photo of him. I did read all 500 plus mentions of Sam in archived newspapers but the few photos I found were grainy. It was hard to really see his features. So I reached out to organizations and other people who knew him. Lucky for me, the Seattle Opera had a few photos in their public archives due to his philanthropy. I scrutinized these photos like an art collector who’d acquired a Rembrandt.
Now when I look in the mirror I see Sam in my reflection. My ears (and my middle son’s) are just like Sam’s and his son’s. Oh, and my eyes, the shape is a carbon copy of his. I stare at the photos wondering if I can make out the color of his brown eyes, mine are like whiskey. Sam’s left eye is slightly smaller than his right, JUST LIKE ME. Why did I not wonder where that trait came from before?
A fellow student in my Intro to Judaism class suggested I listen to the podcast Unorthodox and I was instantly addicted. It’s such a great place for a person who didn’t grow up in a Jewish household to be surrounded by and absorb Jewish culture, an hour at a time at least. Episode 180 had an interview with Judith Rosenbaum, executive director of Jewish Women’s archive and she mentioned their most popular blog post was about Jewish hair and her frizzy hair.
I had to read the post . . . it said, “‘Jewish hair’ seems to refer to dark, curly, and often frizzy, hair.” That’s ME I thought. I listened to the podcast, Can We Talk on Jewish Hair too. All of my trials and tribulations when getting my haircut now made sense. I have Jewish hair. Now when I look in the mirror, I love my hair—I know who I’m looking at. I went to a hairdresser who specialized in curly hair. She taught me what to do with my new waves and the frizz too. In telling her my story, she said it’s not uncommon for a major stressful event to alter the makeup of your hair.
I walk down the street wearing my waves with pride in my Jewish heritage. I love my hair because I know where it comes from, where I come from.
https://jwa.org/blog/jewish-hair
https://jwa.org/podcasts/canwetalk/jewish-hair
https://www.bustle.com/articles/110866-what-your-facial-features-say-about-you-according-to-science
I too discovered that I was unexpectedly half Jewish by heritage after a genealogically curious DNA test exploded the myth that I was fully British through and through. (I also discovered I was donor conceived, but that’s another story). And I too have that hair…. which wasn’t shared by members of the family I grew up in, but, as it turned out WAS shared by some of the members of the Jewish family I eventually discovered myself to be a part of. I had always felt different, with that hair. Somehow a cipher, an oddity, in the family. But knowing where it came from was SO comforting!
Discovering you aren’t who you thought you were is a body shock, an identity shock of the first order. I too spent hours (well it felt like it at first) looking in the mirror and seeing a stranger. Not knowing where the composite parts that made me, me, came from, trying to separate out the bits that were from my Mum to somehow make a coherent vision of whom my biological father must have been and what he passed on to me. It was only when I found my biological father’s family who were incredibly wonderful, gracious, humane and accepting of me, that the composite parts like a magnet flew back together so that I could reassemble “me” again and make sense of my authentic identity. My hair is no longer a puzzle. It is MY hair… and the hair of my ancestors. And I am no longer a puzzle.