None of them has ever left the house for school or sports without her hair being combed and styled. No one else has ever washed, conditioned and combed out all that hair. If I was gone on business for three days, and their father or my mother watched them, I came home to bird nests, snarls and elastics left in so long they had to be cut out.

But that's OK. Rosette is what we call tender-headed, and the slightest tugging at her scalp makes her cry. I'm willing to be patient, because this is what we do. I realize that many parents don't even watch TV with their kids. Everyone has his or her own set, in separate rooms, and separate lives. (OK, it helps that we have only one set, and we're crammed into a tiny house. Still.) While I've combed and braided over the past eight years or so, we've talked about what Steve Urkel was doing, and then Sabrina and her friends.

We've watched figure skating, music awards, "My Fair Lady" and "Runaway Bride." We've talked about marriage and divorce, rich and poor, black and white, and all the things in between. We talk a lot about the middle, while I'm parting down the middle, then dividing the strands and securing the ends with glittery elastic.

Summer is the most trying time, I'll admit. Gaila is a dedicated swimmer, but without that kind of greenish-gold low-maintenance hair you see on Olympic types. Swim caps, with two braids tucked under, are essential. And still, this summer she came home from a birthday party during which she'd forgotten to do anything but swim for hours, in and out of the pool for two days. She was crying hysterically when she got into the house. Her waist-length hair was barely touching her shoulders. She had dreaded-up big-time.

I wanted to cry hysterically, too, examining the mass of spongy, fused hair. But I tried to joke around. "OK," I said, "so I like dreadlocks, and if you ever decide to dread-up, that's cool. But most people have multiple dreads, sweetie, not just one. The 10-inch wide, horizontal one."

I ran across the street to find my neighbor Juli, who though very pale-skinned with long, red hair, was the only white girl on her Texas high-school track team. During her hours on the bus and the sidelines, she learned to braid and comb very well. And it helps that she loves my girls, and my porch, with a fierce passion.

During the two hours it took us to work a chamomile-conditioner mix into the damp mass of hair, then separate the curls with a comb, Gaila cried sometimes at her tender scalp, and Delphine held her hand, while Rosette sang songs. The whole time, even after Juli's wrists got tired and she fetched iced tea and let me do the combing, we talked.

Juli and I discussed her workmate Tiffany, who had just dumped another guy but kept his multicarat engagement ring. Then Juli, who had just finished reading a history of Henry VIII and his wives, told us the whole tale of nuptials, their true political, social and romantic reasons, their often unhappy ends. We had time to cover it all, instructive female history, contemporary and medieval, and I looked around at my daughters, who were spellbound. I pulled yet another strand of hair loose, making a combed-through section, and Juli began to braid from the other side, adding gold fasteners she'd bought especially for an occasion like this. Delphine said thoughtfully, "So I have it figured out, Mom. If you were a woman back then, you were sick, pregnant, dead or in a tower. Right?"

"I'm sure glad I'm alive now," Gaila said, wincing.

Rosette said, "But I like princesses!"

Juli took another drink of her iced tea, and I felt Rosette's hand on my leg, Gaila's shoulders against my knees, and Delphine's breath on my neck. My fingers wove and wove, and I knew what was braided into each minute we spent there.

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