It’s easier to think about my hair than the Pandemic and all the things in the world right now that really matter.
Worrying about my hair is an escape, really. Easier than thinking about flattening curves, human loss, and that guy talking about UV rays and disinfectant to curb the virus.
So, I turned to my roots. My grey roots. The ones illuminating along my hairline like the foam on the edge of a wave in a sea of light brown and blonde-highlights. I brushed it this way and that, but the result was the same – a halo of grey.
A brunette friend recently posted on Facebook that she’s embracing her grey roots. God love her. Oh, to be so open to change and growth. To embracing her natural hair.
Screw it. I’m far from natural. I love my fake color and I’m going to keep it.
But, how in the midst of a Pandemic shut down?
My current colorist works from her home. But, she, too, was adhering to the lockdown.
A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal had a page in Saturday’s Off Duty section on Salon Care at Home. An hour later, I was on a digital, virtual chat with a colorist from Dallas working for Color&Co.
There she was on my laptop screen giving me a “consult” while I was seated at my kitchen island. “What is your natural color?” She asked.
“Natural?” I paused not having seen it for at least thirty-five years. “Hmmm, oh, I know, my eyebrow color!”
“Ok,” she said. “How much grey do you have?”
I lowered my head toward the laptop parting my hair this way and that, reminding me of an I Love Lucy episode with Lucy, after learning that they were looking for a brunette, began digging around her hair to show her natural colored roots for an audition in one of Ricky’s shows.
“Ok,” she nodded, virtually. “You’re pretty grey.”
“Yep,” I cringed.
My obsession with hair goes way back. As a young girl I felt that my hair was the only “good feature” I had. When you’re overweight, long lustrous hair can hide a myriad of sins.
As a grown adult, I know better. My hair is not all that I have. But, its’ still a thing with me.
Changing hairdressers is a given. I’m always on the hunt for just the right one. And, when I find him or her, I get bored after a year and move on to find another in the line of holy grail hairdressers.
No matter where I go, though, I love the vibe of getting my hair done. It’s where I gossip, make friends, or talk politics. In many cases, the hair house is where I get my confidence and self-esteem restored.
For me, it’s all about the hair.
“You’re not doing this yourself,” my sister, April, said. She’s an expert at coloring her own hair. “Heath, it’s not that easy and hard to do the back.”
That didn’t stop me. What did was the hair profile on the box from Color&Co.
Wait, Amount of grey: None?
Level 9? Didn’t I once hear my hairdresser say 8?
I put a call into my colorist, who put together a kit for me and a personal video how to do my color, charging me next to nothing for it. I picked the kit up on her front porch, like a drug deal in the night.
I laid it all out on the bathroom counter, studying the video like it was a lecture from an esteemed professor. The exam, if I failed, would be really bad hair color and no way to fix it.
It’s about vanity. I admit it.
Yet, besides my husband, Hank, who doesn’t mind the grey growth, who sees me in the real? And, where am I going other than the market? I can click that little button on Zoom to make me look a little better when I meet with people virtually. FaceTime is with my close family and friends who have seen me at my worst, so why the need to do the color?
I mean, really?
Because, I still look at me. Whether it’s a good cut, a fresh blow-out or just the right color, it makes me feel good.
And, it’s still about the hair. Pandemic, or none.
I picked up the application brush, and like a magic wand, I parted the sea of grey and in just 35 minutes… Poof!
The grey was gone.
And, now I seek out another petty worry. Another escape to move through this time of uncertainty.
Or, maybe not. It’s twelve days in, and I’m already plotting my next “deal” on the door step.
