She was going on about something with
the level of sustained excitement parents find easy to ignore.
I was folding laundry. And then I was
emptying the dishwasher. My daughter's voice was in a constant state
of uplift. It had a sing-song quality that put me at ease. She was
happy. I continued to half-listen as I freed a clog in the stick
vacuum's frozen beater-bar. The thing I pulled out looked like ...
Well … I'll let you imagine the
complicated forms bits of detritus we shed from our scalps or track
in on our shoes take on as they collect over time. Suffice it to say
what I only partially sucked up in the Dustbuster may or may not have
resembled a small rodent of a decidedly muskrat-coloring.
But that is not the point.
My daughter had gotten a small part in
the school play and was twittering about all the things that go into
to making the actual performance so wondrous. Most important of which
was that Yours Truly would be doing her hair before each and every
performance.
“They want us to look like we're from
the 1930s.”
Honestly, I hadn't been paying
attention. But something told me to stop wrestling the dust bunny in
the Dustbuster and tune in.
“Wait? What? Back up a bit. What did
you say about your hair?”
“We have to make it curl and do fancy
things like people did in the olden days.”
The way she looked at me as I gripped
the vacuum filter, clawing giant dust balls into the trash, it was as
if she had all the faith in the world that I could actually do this
thing call 'a hairdo.'
Who does she think I am? I mean, I am
the person whose Twitter feed describes her thusly: “Still
getting up in the morning, but have given up combing my hair.”
That is not a euphemism. That line is
the unvarnished truth. If I rake my fingers through the conditioning
process in the shower, I count it as combed.
I get my hair cut once every three
years, and the extent of my styling skill is to sweep up my stringy
locks into a ponytail, hoping to catch all the wispy-bits at the back
of my neck (I often fail).
The more I think about it, the more I'm
sure that this thing called haircare might not be in my DNA. Growing
up, I recall the errant pink-foam hair rollers I'd find around the
house. I'd assumed they were my mother's even though her hair was
close-cropped – like a man's – for as long as I could remember.
Certainly before close-cropped hair on a woman was ever fashionable.
I'm still standing in a cloud of dust
over the garbage can when my daughter hands me a picture of Ginger
Rogers in the precisely-lit grandeur of her Hollywood heyday.
“They want me to make your hair look
like that?”
The coiffure to my eye was an
incomprehensible mountain range. It kept its shape – foothills
above the shoulders, sloping peaks at the crown – despite appearing
as smooth and buttery as silk. It flowed in rivulets nature had no
part in making.
I didn't know where to start.
“They said that hot curlers would
work.”
This hot curler thing – turns out –
is a fishing-tackle-type box you plug into a wall, which then heats
up a couple of dozen foam-lined spools that one is then supposed to
wind around individual strands of hair.
Don't laugh at me.
Thankfully, the box came with simple
instructions.
Plug in
Let heat for 10 minutes
Make sure lid is open while heating
(to keep stored hair clips from melting)
Roll hair
Leave in hair for 10 – 15 minutes
I tried it on my own hair first.
It did seem foolproof. Not even waiting
the full ten minutes, the hair that released from the flocked spools
bounced into a loose coil.
Excitement abounds as we realized hair
styling success was within our reach.
After a 10-minute reheat, it was my
daughter's turn. But her younger, thicker, more lustrous hair was
ambivalent. Some tresses doubled over at awkward angles; others
refused to bend at all to the curlers' whims.
“What do we do now?” she asked in a
panic.
I had no answer. “Maybe the
Dustbuster … the hair that comes out of that always curls. …”
I know. ... She looked at me with that
same horror, too.
I know. I'll Google “How to use bobby
pins” maybe there's still hope.
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