Lucy overcomes her fears to swirl with her curls

lucy was tHrilled when she saw her reflection at Disney World

I wasn’t with Lucy when she got her longed-for curly hair. Her mother took her to the appointment — which lasted for hours — where Lucy’s hair was washed and combed and cut, then set in rollers and squirted with solution. Then there was sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting, then more solution and more waiting, and washing and conditioning and drying.

A few years ago, the waiting alone would have put the kibosh on curls. Lucy, my just-turned 20-year-old granddaughter who has Down syndrome, has always wanted curls, has yearned for them, reached out —since she was a baby — to touch her mother’s soft curls, and her Aunt Julie’s curlier ones, and even mine. But there is no way on God’s earth she would allow any of us to pat her on the head or run a brush through her hair, never mind twist her hair onto small, plastic tubes.

My Aunt Lorraine was the same way about anyone touching her. When I was a child, I would hug her with hands sticky from jam, kiss her with milk-chocolate lips, get cookie dough not just all over the countertop but all over both of us, and she’d laugh it off. But if I even thought about touching her hair, if, during a hug, my hand accidentally brushed the nape of her neck where her hair was, she would recoil as if my fingers were snakes. She could touch her hair. But no one else could. That was the rule and even I, who challenged rules, knew better than to challenge this one.

A sensory thing, right? But I didn’t know that then. No one knew. We chalked it up to Lorraine being Lorraine.

The point is that Lucy’s aversion to having her hair touched was familiar to me. But as she grew older, her aversion grew worse. When she was 4 and 5 and 6, she was persuadable. She wore her hair in two little ponytails and tolerated, with just a few whines and “no’s!,” the process of brushing and pulling that resulted in her looking like Buffy in that old TV show “Family Affair.” But as the years progressed, so too did Lucy’s intolerance for combs no matter how wide, and brushes no matter how soft, and barrettes and bows, anything that touched her scalp.

Lucy Falcone was thrilled by the princess hairstyle she got at Disney World.

There was one exception: At Disney World, eight years ago, Lucy — wearing a Cinderella dress we’d brought from home — sat in a princess chair, a gold-rimmed oval mirror behind her, and allowed a young woman to comb and yank and pull and brush her hair into a bun so tight it hurt my head to look at it.

On top of the bun, the woman then placed a crown. All this took time: 22 minutes exactly, and I, of little faith, kept expecting a meltdown. But Lucy was transfixed, as still and emotionless as stone, not a furrow on her forehead, not a tremor on her lips. And when the woman swiveled the chair and Lucy saw herself in the mirror? She smiled.

It took courage and patience and faith and trust for Lucy to sit in the chair that day. And something else. Something that made her stand up straighter that afternoon and all the next day, as she walked holding her head high like a princess all through the park.

Over the years, she has, of course, tolerated the occasional curling iron. And she has, many times, had her hair cut. But just a cut and that’s all. No curlers. No snap-on rollers. No blow dry. “All done” she’ll say. And that will be it.

A brush and a comb remain her enemies.

But curly hair is her siren song. And two weeks ago, this siren song eclipsed everything.

She came home from school and announced that she wanted curly hair. Her mother explained the process so that Lucy would understand that getting curly hair would not only take a long time but would also require combs, brushes, curlers, dryers, and a lot of pulling. Everything Lucy does not like.

Lucy listened. She heard. She still wanted curly hair.

She walks around now her long, curly hair flowing, a bit of a bounce in her step, and I think: She stormed a castle for those curls. She walked over hot coals and slayed a dragon. She endured what she thought she couldn’t endure.

She is my hero. She is my joy.