Hair... Grows

My hair stylist, "Rosemarie", has been cutting my hair since 1991.  She was two years ahead of me in high school, and we were in youth group together at St. Small Town Catholic Church.  After she graduated she went to beauty school and started doing my mom's hair at the salon where she got her hair done.  I liked what Rosemarie did with Mom's hair, and made the switch soon after.  She and I have been through a lot together.  She knows all of my secrets, and I know very little of hers, which the way it should be when it comes to the Chair.  Rosemarie is a consummate professional.  She is my counselor, and now that I am growing my hair out, it is hard to go a few months without seeing her... but I know that that is what I must do if I want my hair to grow long and sexy like Kim Kardashian.  I know... who am I kidding?  Even if I grew my hair long I would never look like Kim Kardashian, but a girl can dream, right? 

Rosemarie is the reason I streaked my hair purple last summer when everything else was going wrong and I needed something to take a little bit of control back.  Whenever I have a breakup, I almost always find my way back to her chair.  Back in January, when Joe and I broke up, I arranged a weekend of beauty for myself.  Pedicure Friday night, massage Saturday morning, followed by a cut and color with Rosemarie.  It was the best, most indulgent couple of days.  I hated the reason, but it felt wonderful to be so good to myself.  Rosemarie is my confidant... she has witnessed my tears more than a few times, and a few years ago during a particularly painful breakup that I was recounting to her, when my eyes welled up, she looked at me and asserted, Jen, there is nothing wrong with you.  He is the one with the problem.

It felt good to hear her strong words.  My eyes dried up.  We started talking about something else.  Rosemarie is worth her weight in gold.

I had plans with one of my counselor friends yesterday afternoon for "therapy", followed two hours later by a hair appointment.  I hadn't sat in Rosemarie's chair since May, but I had seen her a couple times this summer when I brought my mother into the salon for a wash and set.  (My mom's foot surgeries, chronicled in The Good Daughter and The Daughter-Scrubbing, had left her temporarily unable to wash her own hair.)  I had told her about Single, and hoped that she would read it.

She did.  Yesterday, when I went in for my trim, as she was using her long nails to scrub my neglected scalp during the shampoo, which everybody knows is the best part of getting one's hair cut, she started in on the blog.  Jen, of course, I knew most of the stories, but it was so fun to read!  

Thanks, Rosemarie!  

There were some stories that she didn't know, but it was cool to talk about all the happenings in my life with Rosemarie in a new way.  In fact, I was so busy talking to her (plus a little bit buzzed from the... "therapy"), that aside from telling her that I liked that my hair had been growing, but hated that it just kind of hung down my face and didn't have much of a style... not a whole lot of life going on, that I didn't realize how much she was cutting.  She layered my hair, and it looks nice (definitely does more than just hang) but I had finally gotten to the point that when I got home at the end of a busy day-- or even during the busy day when I was tired with dealing with my hair-- that I could just throw it up into a bun and kind of forget about it until the next morning... and it looked cute!  Now... the bun is kind of loose and there's hair that hangs around my face rather than getting completely swept back.  It looks fine... it's just not what it was.  It's a trade off.  Most of my life is a trade off.

You know, we women are never happy with our hair.  Unless our name is Kim Kardashian, that is, and it's completely straight and glossy and gorgeous.  Like I said, my hair will never look like hers, but the cool thing about hair is that no matter how short it gets cut, hair... grows. 

I just have to be patient.  And wait.