Painfully Curly
I grew up in a house full of women. My mom taught my sisters and me the importance of having well-coifed hair at every opportunity. I remember being in the fifth grade, sitting in front of the mirror in my room trying to curl my hair with a curling iron. Nearly every day I burned my ear or fingers on it, but I was determined to have perfect curls like the models in my teen magazines.
We were lucky that Mom knew how to give us all home perms. Every few weeks, when it was my turn to get a perm, I would sit in a chair in her bedroom while Mom rolled every strand of hair into prickly rollers smashed tightly into my head. I have a lot of hair, and it took a lot more rollers to curl my hair than my sisters’. Thank goodness there was a television in Mom’s bedroom so I could watch The Brady Bunch while I was being tortured.
The worse part of getting a perm (as if sitting for two hours getting your hair pulled wasn’t bad enough), was when Mom squirted the bottles of chemicals over my head. It took two bottles for my hair because there were twice as many rollers. The smell was excruciating. It burned my nose, and caused anyone in the room to lose their breath for several minutes, even with the fan turned on. I don’t remember how long I had to sit there while the chemicals marinated my hair, but it seemed like hours. When the timer finally went off, Mom would remove one of the rollers to make sure it was “set”. If it wasn’t a tight curl, she would make me sit even longer. Once she deemed it ready, I endured the next level of torture, removing the rollers.
It must have been worth all the pain and agony because I asked Mom to perm my hair for many years during high school and college. It was the 80’s, and everyone was doing it. When I look at the photos from my first wedding, I laugh at the amount of hair on my bridesmaids’ heads. We all look like we’re wearing halos of cotton candy. I was well into my twenties when I stopped getting my hair permed, but I still had pretty good skills using a curling iron.
After college most of my friends were getting their hair “frosted” at the hair salon. That meant they were getting streaks of blond put into their dark hair. I couldn’t afford to go to the salon, so I bought a box of hair color at the grocery store. It had a cap that looked like a swim cap, but it was covered with tiny holes. The box also contained a crochet hook for pulling your hair through the holes. I convinced my husband to pull my hair through the holes and smear the chemicals all over the strands of hair sticking out of my head. It took several hours to get through the process, but I had frosted hair like all my friends.
I’m glad I had a mom that cared about her looks, and shared her beauty tips with her daughters. When she got cancer one of the hardest things she dealt with was losing her hair. She spent a lot of time choosing the right wig that looked the most like her own hair. In a way, she was happier with the wig because she never had to curl it.
As I’ve gotten older, my hair has become naturally curly. But now I often use a flat iron to straighten it. I’m not sure why I can’t be satisfied with the natural state of my hair. Maybe it’s just knowing that I have the ability to change it if I want to. But if I ever lose my hair I’ll be first in line at the wig shop, and I’ll likely buy one that’s curly, and one that’s straight. And who knows, maybe I’ll become a redhead.
