ROBIN WRITES: I'm outgrowing my hair

Another time, my grown daughter actually groaned as she raked her fingers against my hairdo and mumbling about a "bare place." I just felt loved at the time, but now I understand.

Yesterday, I washed and conditioned my hair with the fancy smoothing, nourishing, gentle-for-mature-hair, costs more than I’ll ever admit to John — products with an apostrophe in their brand name to emphasize their la-dee-dah-ness.

I grabbed my huge, heated, blow-dryer brush and began the drying process. Roll. Pull. Roll. Pull.

All the time, I grimaced toward the mirror, studying my sweaty face and hoping for an outcome that would transform me into one someone whose hair was as smooth and lustrous as the woman on any box of hair color.

Years later, my hair was finally dry. It looked as it always did. No miracle this time. Just flattish and brownish and, well, dry. I was happy with the sides and swung my head this way and that, pretending to be frolicking in a fan-induced breeze.

I never worry too much about the back of my hair. I just dry it as always. But for some reason, yesterday, I decided to take a peek at the back with a mirror.

I picked up my electric, lighted makeup mirror (the one that helps me see my facial flaws in every imaginable earthly light variant) and hauled it head-height. The loose cord scraped along the floor like a rattling serpent.

I looked into the mirror into the other mirror. There, I saw it. A long, wide corridor of pinkish skin bulged from the crown of my head to the place where my neck began curving inward.

The hair on either side of the crevasse was folded back, in meek obeisance, like the parting waters of the Red Sea. It was as if Moses himself had taken an interest in my follicles.

I gasped. How could my hair look so Red Riding Hood-Grandma normal in front and so Hansel and Gretel-Witch haggish in the back? Why were the strands so thin? Where had they gone?

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been protecting these back-of-the-head hairs … I watch a lot of TV, and I always press them against the headrest of the couch. I sleep on a fluffy pillow and flip it often to assure a smooth surface for my head as I plop it back down.

I brush it (quickly) before I leave the house, sure that as long as my hair is tidy, I am permitted to mingle with humanity.

Have I been walking around with this huge bulge of skin sticking out of my head for years? Have people been pointing to it and snickering, wondering if I knew?

I held the mirror in one hand and fluttered my fingers along the Great Divide, trying to cover the barren field beneath with little success. Then I grabbed my tiny can of Root Touch-up spray and pointed the nozzle. I pressed the button and colored my white, bald, head stripe with the shoe polish-brown dye.

Now, I had a jagged Tootsie Roll of possible-carcinogen-containing color beneath a curtain of wispy hair. I put the mirror down.

I’ve decided that my skull is just growing, along with my experience and infirmities. I’m choosing to be proud of my increased brain capacity and will stop looking at the back of my bald, baby-pink head.