Towheads and Toeheads

Noah's hair is really starting to come in--hooray!

Don't get me wrong; we have always loved his quasi-bald head. Since he was born, we've enjoyed snuggling with that warm, fuzzy head. But it is nice that he is finally getting more hair.

Several months ago, while having a conversation about how bald he was, someone called Noah a towhead. Now, I had never heard that term before, and to my ears, it sounded like "toehead." Y'all, even though I didn't show it, I was actually slightly affronted. I thought that was the grossest term ever. Seriously! Comparing someone's bald head to a toe?! Gross.

However, my in-laws recently set me straight: the term isn't toehead, it's towhead. According to dictionary.com, towhead is defined as "a head of very light blonde hair" or "a person with such hair." So Noah is a towhead. I can live with that. Although I still think it sounds like an insulting nickname that second graders would use.

Speaking of hair color, Nathan and I noticed lately that our hair is quite a bit darker than it was when we moved up to Boston. Mine used to be a dark blonde--it was sort of wheat-colored. Now it's undeniably brown. (It's a light brown, but still.) Nathan's hair has always been brown (except for when he was younger than about 5 years old, but that's before they switched him out), and now it is quite dark. In fact, he said that about a year ago, after visiting the church he grew up in on one of our trips home, an old friend's father asked him if he had dyed his hair. Seriously?!? Nathan said that he was so confused by the question and was trying to come up with an appropriate response when the man's wife stepped in and said, "No, honey, his hair is just darker now." When Nathan told me that story the other day, I totally cracked up. No, Nathan is not quite vain enough to dye his hair, thank you very much.

We've decided that the reason our hair is darker is that we have been living in an area of the country that enjoys (I use the term loosely) a six-month winter. Plus, the quality of the light here is gentler than the brash Texas sun. So we believe that the reason our hair has darkened over the years is the lack of natural bleaching. Even sitting in the Houston traffic bleaches your hair, as I discovered one summer when the left side of my head turned blonder than the right.

So I suppose you can add the lighter-colored hair of our youth to the growing list of reasons we will be glad to move back to Texas one of these days.