A Change of Pace

"Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty."
— Amy March in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Me (back), my dad, my sister, Carrie, and my Grandma Haskell of the pin-curls 1980

I've always had pretty hair.  I've worn it long most of my life.  Long is easy, and cheap.  And pretty.  Then, more a decade ago, I decided there was nothing sadder than a fat old lady with stringy hair hanging down her back, clinging to the last vestiges of a glory long past—rather like the wisps of hair still clinging to her head.

So, I cut it.  My stylist, Melanie Knapke, suggested a bob.  Long hair and short both at once.  Melanie is very good.  She's also very expensive, so the length of my hair has waxed and waned with my finances.  For a while it was very long again.  I was content.

The other day, Dallas and I went shopping because I had a job interview and my clothes no longer fit.  I knew I have lost quite a bit of weight over the past year or so, but I hadn't gone down a dress size.  I had gone down two.  And, I got into a skirt a size that I haven't been able to wear for nearly 30 years.  I tried it on by mistake, but I even got it buttoned and zipped.  I didn't buy it, but I felt like one of those Progresso soup commercials.  It fits!  It fits!! [happy dance].  I didn't call Progresso.  I just told Desireé.

I needed change!   I had changed, and wanted my hair to change as well.  I guess I felt a bit of spring fever.  I have also had an aversion to becoming one of those middle-aged matrons with helmet hair.  I did not want to be a bobble-head.  I had been toying with the idea of shorter for a while, so I took Melanie this picture of my beautiful (and very stylin') sister, Carrie (the one on the right).

The conversation went like this as I sat in the chair before the mirror and Melanie tugged at my shaggy hair with her fingers:

" What do you think of short?"
"Do you have a picture?"  Melanie stares a few moments at Carrie's picture I lifted from Facebook.  ". . . umm, I could cut your hair like that, but you wouldn't like it."
[me making a squiggy face]  "I would look terrible, huh?"
"No, I could do it and make it look good, but you couldn't.  You couldn't make your hair look like this, and you would go home and hate it."

I sat there disappointed as Melanie explained to me about the curl in my hair and the fine wispies around my face that are such a pain to deal with.  These things I know, of course.  They're the biggest reason I've worn my hair long for so many years.  Carrie's hair is straight as a stick (which she hates, of course).   At least she can change it.

I inherited my grandmother's hair.  For as long as I knew her, she wore her hair short with two pin-curls plastered down right at the corners of her forehead.  Growing up, I thought she was just stuck in the 1930's and refused to change her hairstyle.  After years of sad experience, I realized she found something her hair would actually do and stuck to it.  Fortunately, I have more than bobby pins and Dippity Do to work with.

The long and the short (very short) of it?  Melanie gave me a great cut that works for my hair.  Desireé and Ariane really like it.  Desireé's mom, Leslie, was effusive.  Adam was properly appreciative.  Melanie said I reminded her of Natalie Portman.  I love Melanie.

Dallas hates it, of course.  With a purple passion.  He likes long hair.  But, darlin', I'm not seventeen any longer.  I had thought you noticed.

It's just a pic off my cellphone at Chuck E. Cheese's, but it's what I've got.  It looks a la monde in real life.  What do you think?

—A Chaotic Mind