I asked my mom this morning, somewhat rhetorically, if she liked my new haircut. Not having seen me in over 6 months means she’s not the best gauge of how my hair looks now relative to my ‘do a few weeks ago, but predictably she said, “you should cut off a little more, go a little shorter.”
She went on to tell me about one of her longtime patients, Genevieve, who is “just like my daughter, strong and independent” (mom’s words, not mine) and has long hair. “She always refuses to cut her hair, even when it gets unhealthy — so stubborn, just like you! I started treating her for healthier hair, easier to grow and maintain.” My mom is an acupuncturist — treating means needles, herbs and occasional suction cups and meditative bird noises. Sometimes Genevieve would relent and trim off a few inches of her hair and give it to my mom as a gift. “I burn it until it turns into a charcoal-like substance and I add it into herb formulas.”
I asked my mom, “Are you sure that’s healthy? I mean, when you burn hair, it’s sort of like burning rubber. You form sulfur compounds in the air…kind of gross, right?”
“What are you talking about! It’s really good for you, good for stopping internal bleeding problems, especially if you use your own hair.” When my sister was sick (a cyst on her pituitary gland) a couple of years ago, my mom took some of her hair, burned it, and added it to a concoction, “devised uniquely for xiao mei [little sister]“.
“I also took the placenta from when I gave birth to her — I’d saved it for all these years just in case we would need it — and added it to the formula.” I remember when we were kids, my mom would come home from her clinic once every few months with a slimy and disproportionately-shaped plastic bag. She would take it and make a run for the laundry room where there was a giant tub sink. We would follow her and watch her as she emptied the contents of the plastic bag into the sink and massage an astronomical and gory something-or-other under the running water as if she was trying to revive a bleeding heart. “What are you doing, Ma?” we would scream, to which my mom, the dragonlady, would answer, “I’m just cleaning someone’s placenta.” We’d watch in awed silence for a couple of minutes, get bored and then let my mom get on with her cleansing ritual.
My mom told me this morning that it saddened her a great deal when my sister refused to drink the personalized herbs, hair and placenta and all. “She said it was too gross, such a loss.”
A Chinese artist, Wenda Gu, recently created a rad installation for Dartmouth College, on view through the end of October, made completely out of more than 430 pounds of human hair — the latest in his 15-plus years work with hair as a medium.
Wenda Gu has also previously created works with placenta, apparenty met with some controversy.
Artwork of hair raising curiosity (Deseret Morning News)
A United Nations of Hair: Straight, Curly, Flaxen, Waxen and 80 Feet Long (New York Times)
More on life at home, especially Mom’s funny isms // wisdoms in coming days.
