I reclined in the chair, hair suspended over the deep sink as Tiffany finished the process of “washing that gray right out of my hair.” Eyes closed, I prepared for the next phase of my precisely scheduled trip to her cheerful salon. As she carefully applied the wax to my eyebrows, I heard the door open and she greeted her two sons. My reverie was broken as a deep voice responded to her inquiries about their trip to the swimming pool. I forced my eyes open to catch a glimpse of a lanky thirteen-year-old standing near my head and quickly moved a near-sighted gaze to a miniature version of the adolescent who inquired about my “eyebrows.”
With a quick, head-clearing shake of my head, I mentally counted back the years since I first entrusted the most sacred ritual of hair care to an attractive, dark-haired young woman. Was it possible that the years had passed so quickly? I was a client before her now teenaged son was even born. A memory of the events that landed me in a chair in a well-know chain of salons where Tiffany started her career flashed before my eyes.
In my twenties and early thirties, I sporadically visited number of hair care professionals who gave me obligatory haircuts and even, at my request, gave my naturally curly, wavy hair a perm so tight I had to use a pitchfork to separate the tiny ringlets. But the appearance of the first gray hairs and the observation from my young son who announced, “Mom, you have a moustache,” changed the course of history.
I was visiting my two sisters in Atlanta for a few days. I had been battling several months of unexplained and unexpected depression and, in desperation, booked a flight for some intense “female bonding.” In their nurturing care, I ate, laughed, shopped, and enjoyed a respite from the heaviness my soul had encountered. On the final day of my visit, my sister Vaunda decided a makeover was in order.
“I think that highlights would be the perfect solution,” she announced. Meekly, I presented myself as the sacrificial lamb to her well-intentioned idea. Since birth, I had served as a combination crash-test dummy and lab rat to my siblings, why bother to change now?
