They Laughed at My Mother’s Bald Head — So I Did the Only Thing a Child Could Do, and the Whole Street Went Silent

Growing Back, Holding On

Her hair returned like punctuation—first a question mark’s shadow, then an exclamation point’s fuzz, then waves remembering themselves. One afternoon, I found her before the mirror, touching the new growth with something like relief. I touched my own hair, now longer, and realized: even when things grow back, some lessons never leave.