To cut or not to cut...

that is the question I must answer every seven weeks or so.

Seriously, I do need a haircut. But I'm at a crossroads, the same crossroads I come to each time my bangs grow long enough to brush against my eyebrows: do I get a haircut or go for the long hair I've always wanted?

I already know the answer. I always get my hair cut back to a shorter state. But that doesn't change the fact that each and every time I sit in the stylist's chair I dream of having long, wavy beautiful, flowing brown hair (and now I dream if it without gray -- that's a recent addition to the dream...).

I'm pretty sure the dream originated in 1980 when I got my first Amy Grant album. I not only fell in love with the music but I fell in love with her hair. It was the same color as mine, and the comparison stops there. She had (and has) long, full, curly hair. And I wanted it.

Oh, I tried. Bless my mother for taking me to fabulous stylists in search of my dream, perming, trimming, trying to get Amy Grant hair. (And bless my dad for financing it.) But nothing worked. Once my hair hit my shoulders it would just go limp, no matter what products I used or how long I slaved over it with a curling iron.

So since high school I have been content (barely) with just-above-my-shoulders-length hair. But each time I go for the cut I dream of having long, sexy hair.

There is a great irony, though, that I see each day about hair: my first daughter got my dream hair. It's shiny, full, thick and wavy. But my poor second daughter got my hair, and she's already saying, "I want hair like hers." And Daughter #1 doesn't even appreciate how gorgeous her hair is!

The Rolling Stones song "You Can't Always Get What You Want" comes to mind...