Biggest. Compliment. Ever.

It was a good day. My mother-in-law stopped by. Grandma P was looking elegant and ravishing as always. She is a very classy, well-groomed lady.  Suddenly, she said (completely unsolicited) "Man, you take good care of JJ's hair". Biggest. Compliment. Ever.

Or so I thought. Until she said to me: "Could you do MY hair like that?". That's an even bigger compliment.

JJ's hair *was* looking pretty good if I do say so myself- I'd taken out all those fuzzy front flat twists and replaced with about 60 new regular two-strand twists and added beads. The back twists were still fine, so I left them (more on this style later, but here is a picture):

Cute, even if a little fuzzy from playing...

Snaps from Snapaholics arrived - yay!

I could not believe my ears. At that moment Grandma P's hair was in a style I hadn't seen before; short, black, and straight with red highlights. Honestly, I can rarely keep up with what she's doing with her hair. She changes it often (wigs, relaxers, braid extensions, weaves), and we see her once or twice a month, so it's almost always something new.

I knew enough to know her current style was a wig, and I was ***dying*** to see her natural hair because I so rarely get to see it. So I just came out and asked "How long is your hair now?". She whipped off her wig and shook out her hair. It was almost shoulder-length when stretched. I was so excited to see her natural hair. She told me she'd taken a break (since November) from relaxing and she'd experienced some good growth (including her hairline which had taken some abuse from the braid extensions she had in before her most recent weave). It was the first time we've ever talked about "natural hair" together.

She ran to the bathroom and co-washed. Well, she didn't call it that, but that's what she did.... I felt nervous about approaching detangling so I offered her my widest comb and she did a quick comb-through. Her hair felt wonderful and soft. It has a great curl pattern - beautiful small round coils. I could not contain my excitement about how nice and healthy it felt and made sure to tell her so.

We set to work together to speed up the impromptu styling session; she did two-strand twists in the front and I did the back. I was kind of relieved that she took responsibility for the hairline as I wasn't sure exactly what direction to twist to frame her face. She ended up twisting towards the front to create bangs. We made fairly small twists - about 120 altogether. It took an hour. We were both very pleased.

I don't think Grandma P would ever give me permission to put up a picture of her face on the internet (!!!) but here is the back of her twisted hair.

Sorry, this pic is a little out of focus. It looked fine in the tiny camera display...
Anyway it was a **huge** moment for me! 

I feel like an invisible wall has come down between us. We've always gotten along, it's not that, but for her to ask me to do her hair was incredibly empowering for me and has definitely brought us even closer. And JJ was so excited to see Grandma with hair just like hers.