I am four years old. One of my earliest memories is the feeling of my mother combing my curls with her fingers, the rhythmic tug, tension, and release as she braided my hair, the scent of almond and peppermint hair dress on her palms, and the sense, as she held my head in her hands, of being connected at the roots.
But when I play this memory back, I realize that I’ve misremembered. It was not my mother braiding my hair, but my aunt. This seems fitting, though, because the act of braiding can often feel like an act of mothering, of being adorned and cherished. When I think of braids, I think of my mother, yes, but also her sisters, and their mother and her sisters, and the long strand of Black women, thousands of years long, who came before them. I think of braiding my own daughter’s hair, extending this web of connection.
Braids are an act of love and nurturing, of communion and connection. Braids are also a sign of tribal affiliation. A right of passage. An embrace of Blackness. A form of protest. A celebration of culture. An act of resistance. A map to freedom. A source of stigma. A birthright. A secret language. A place to rest. A proud lineage. So, when I think of braids, I think of mothers and daughters and sisters, yes, but I also think of the long chain of relationships that extend beyond the bonds of mother- and sister- hood. I think of all the ways in which braids are woven into the story of my life.
Braids are a time lapse.
I am 16 years old. The first time I visit the salon where I will have my hair braided for the next decade, there is a baby parked in a bouncy seat on the floor in front of me, the owner’s daughter. Just a few months old, wearing a onesie with ducks and llamas on it, she spends most of the appointment trying to shove her fist into her mouth. She has a perfect little wisp of hair on top of her head, as if conceived of in a Pixar animation studio. At my next appointment, months later, she’s there again, with slightly pudgier fingers and slightly more hair. She’s there again at the next appointment and the next. As a toddler wearing twists with beads on the end. A preschooler with an Afro puff and braided bangs. A fourth-grader with box braids on her way to summer camp. Watching her grow up feels like watching one of those viral videos where a baby morphs into a teenager right before your eyes. And even though I feel the same at 26 as I did at 16, I know I’m not, because she’s not.
Braids are a funny story.
I am eight years old. Before Amazon, before Barbie had a belly button and came in 35 skin tones, before toy companies launched diversity committees, I was a little girl whose mother had to go to the ends of the earth to find her a Black baby doll. My prized possession, I feed her, dress her, and care for her as if she is my own. But where her skin color matches mine, the texture of her hair does not. Straight as a bone, silky as seal skin, when I attempt to braid her hair, as my mother braids my own, the strands simply will not hold. Nevertheless, committed to the project of her makeover, I do the only thing left for an unapologetic child of the ’90s to do: I give her The Rachel. On the one hand, this is a somewhat unfortunate sign of the times, the lack of representation permeating the entire culture from toys to television, but on the other hand, the layers do frame her face quite nicely.
Braids are a portal to a familiar world.
I am 22 years old. I have just left home, though I haven’t just left home: I’ve gone for broke, moving as far away as possible, to the spot on the globe that is a 180-degree spin from everything I know. A different culture, a different language, a different rhythm of life are all part of the appeal but also what make it feel lonely. There’s a common travel trope, about the much-maligned tourist who will go for a hamburger at McDonald’s instead of opening up to the delights of local cuisine, and I’ll admit, I get it. There is comfort in finding the familiar while surrounded by the strange, there is comfort in walking into a hair braiding salon in Abu Dhabi that’s exactly the same as the salon in New York and the same as the salon in Madrid. The same Nigerian soap operas playing at an ungodly volume, the same black jars of edge tamer stacked on a glass shelf, the same sun-bleached hair magazine cutouts on the wall, the same mise-en-scène: rows of stylists bent over rows of tender heads bent over rows of sinks. All of these other women and me, so far from home, united, not by a Big Mac and fries, but by Marley twists and box braids.
Braids are a smoke signal.
I am 26 years old. On a ski trip, I find myself hopelessly lost. As the wind whips around my ears and I do battle with a weather-battered map, I feel a tap on my shoulder (in fact, it’s a pole on my ski tip.) “Hey! Come on! It’s this way!” A stranger beckons. My fingers are numb, my map is disintegrating; I don’t ask questions, just follow along. We are already at the lodge by the time it occurs to me that I have been swept up in someone else’s ski weekend. A big group of Black skiers on an annual trip, they’ve mistaken me for one of their own. I try to explain, but they ignore me, just crush together making room for me around the fireplace. I tell them again, “I’m not with you,” but they just shove a fondue skewer at me, “Well you are now.” Because of my braids, which are the only part of me visible underneath my helmet and facemask, they assume I’m part of their group. Thanks to my braids, I am part of their group.
Braids are a form of catharsis.
I am 33 years old. It is the dark heart of the pandemic, when the specter of death still looms, but it’s time to adjust to an altered way of life. The feeling of missing people has become painfully acute, not only the dead, but also the living, and not only friends and family, but also strangers, the intimacy of crowds, of stadiums and restaurants and movie theaters. I haven’t left the house for weeks, but I reach out to the woman who braids my hair, a cry for help. I am missing the very particular intimacy of the people who tend to my constituent parts, the people who paint my nails, clean my teeth, run their fingers through the knots in my hair. But also, I am running out of hats to wear on Zoom calls; my hair is a mess. She agrees to see me, doors open, masks up, and spends the afternoon tending to my tired tresses, even though neither of us is certain it won’t kill us. It’s a relief, a balm, the resumption of this ritual, a reminder of what was and what might again be.
Braids are a mirror.
I am 20, 25, 35 years old. One immutable fact of life as a Black woman with braids in America: You will be mistaken for every other Black woman with braids in the building. But the corollary is also true: Every other Black woman in the building with braids will be mistaken for you. A strange solidarity. Solidarity every time I stop a woman on the street to ask her where she got her hair braided and every time a woman stops me on the street to ask me where I got my hair braided. Solidarity every time I compliment another woman with braids and every time she returns the compliment. The strange and beautiful symmetry of seeing yourself in other people, of other people seeing themselves in you.
I am five years old, it’s July, and I’m wearing my hair in cornrows, the perfect summer style, resilient to sand, salt, and melted popsicles. For centuries, the people of West Africa and the Horn of Africa have worn their hair in the three-strand braids, but they are so called because, to their American and Caribbean descendants, they resembled the rows of corn over which they toiled in the fields. I am 15 years old and, when my mother braids my hair, we share confidences and she tells me how it was when she was 15, what’s the same, what’s changed; she hands me a $20 bill, “mad money,” to keep in my bra in case of emergency. During slave rebellions, black women hid rice and grains in their braids for future sustenance as they escaped to freedom. I am 25 years old, and, in the name of professionalism, I painfully and painstakingly straighten my hair for work, though one day, fed up, I simply decide to stop. In the 1960s, as part of the Black Power movement, more and more Black women began to wear natural and braided hairstyles, rejecting Eurocentric standards of beauty. My life in braids is, essentially, my life.
