October 15, 2010
After attending a meeting downtown, I treated myself to a much needed hair appointment.
For the past several years I had been getting greyer and greyer.
Most disconcerting.
I don’t care about getting older, or even getting grey hair.
But if I’m going grey, I want all my hair to be grey.
Not just some of it.
Grey hair is splattered throughout my naturally brown hair.
Enough of it to be noticeable.
Enough for Emily, who loves to play with my hair to comment,
“Mum, you have A LOT of grey hair!”
Around the sides, there is enough coarse, wiry grey hair to knit a blanket with.
Consequently, every 6-8 weeks, depending on cash flow, I get my hair colored and trimmed.
Because the other thing that has happened, post-kids and as a result of my thyroid pills is that my hair as become dry, coarse and in the front, as in the very front, thin.
But if my hair is longer, the top thinning is much less noticeable.
And longer hair is easier to take care of. . .no weird bed head in the morning, and if I don’t feel like doing anything with it, I haul it into a clip and off I go.
My entire youth, the one thing I was able to feel confident about was my hair.
Thick.
Naturally curly, just like Freida in Peanuts.
Gorgeous.
So, imagine my shock when I looked in the mirror one day and was able to see a portion of my scalp I had never seen before.
I thought I was seeing things until my father asked me one day if I was losing my hair at the front of my head.
Nonetheless, thin hair in front or not, I still must have my hair colored until the day comes when it is completely, and nicely, grey.
Salt and pepper hair looks sexy on men.
It looks sexy on my husband.
But my schizophrenic spattering of grey, just significant enough to not ignore, definitely does not look sexy.
In fact, it makes me look tired.
And that, I can definitely do without.
I also love getting my hair done.
THE GODDESS of all hairstylists, Norma, at Klub Soda (454-SODA) is responsible for how good my hair looks, if you’re interested.
You should be interested.
She is phenomenal.
She’d have to be to put up with me.
And the kids.
And Stephen.
As soon as I walk into the salon, I immediately relax.
In fact, after the nursing home, it’s the most relaxing place I know.
Norma pampers me, massages my scalp, covers the offending grey, listens to me, we catch up. . .
No cell phones, no computers, no distractions.
I couldn’t ask for more.
At this moment, I’m sitting in Second Cup, on King Street, at as close to the corner table as I can get.
Not having the car, I decided to just plunk myself here until Stephen can pick me up.
I used to live on King Street, a half a block from the liquor store and a block from Sweetwaters, which was the major club in this city at that time.
The kids and I lived in a six bedroom apartment, the top two floors of a three storey house.
When we moved in, the rent was an astonishing $440.00.
Amazing!
But the heating bill, the oil heating bill, especially in the winter quickly took the shine off the inexpensive rent.
And it was an old house, so it was cavernous and drafty and there were times when I thought taking out shares in Irving Oil would be cheaper.
Usually around $750.00 a month.
Being challenged in anything related to non-electric heat sources, it took me a long time to figure out if we had run out of oil.
Other than if we were freezing our parts off.
Quickly, I learned that there was a vent just below the toilet paper roll in the bathroom.
Turn the heat on, run to the bathroom, and if the toilet paper was being blown around by the heat, we were good.
No blowing toilet paper, no heat.
This once happened on Christmas Even during a snowstorm.
Imagine the joy on the face of the on call oil delivery guy when he got to my house.
Chances are none of this would have ever happened had there been access to the oil drum, or at least reasonable access to the oil drum.
It was in the basement. Which meant that I had to go outside, around to the back of the house, into the dark, dank, creepy basement, cross over to the small room where the oil drum was and check to see how low the doohickey thing was.
The thing that’s similar to the thing that let you know if the Slush Puppy machine was getting low on Slush Puppy goo.
I HATED going into the basement.
Mice, snakes, any and all sorts of little creatures awaited me.
And it was poorly lit.
Unfortunately, the kids were too young to send down there on their own. And I had to wait to go to this den of darkness until after the kids were long asleep because I couldn’t leave them on their own when they were awake.
Given what they got up to when I was there, leaving them scared the crap out of me.
Taking them with me wasn’t an option.
So late night in the dark it was.
I love electric heat.
So long as you pay the power bill, all is good.
And warm.
Had we not been evicted because the landlord wanted to refurbish our two floors to rent to a provincial government organization, that, ironically, ended the contract after a year, I’d still be living there.
Yes, over a decade later I am still bitter about having to leave.
Because they wanted government money.
Which was apparently supposed to be more reliable than mine.
I loved being downtown.
The kids loved being downtown.
Buses, parks, shopping, library. . .everything was right there.
I walked everywhere. Ergo there was less ghetto bootay then.
In the summer, we were never inside. There was always somewhere to go, something to see.
Sometimes, all we had to do was sit on the front step.
Because when you lived downtown all the entertainment you'd want was on the sidewalk.
If there was, for some unusual reason, nothing going on, my kids were more than happy to fill the gap and provide the entertainment.
Mer loves to dance.
As a small child, she never walked anywhere, she danced.
Dance loving and energetic, I enrolled her in dance classes.
Tap and jazz, which meant she tapped all over our hardwood floored apartment, much to the delight to the two men who lived downstairs.
One sunny, summer day, my brother comes upstairs, laughing.
He asked me the question no mother wants to hear: Do you know what you’re children are doing?
It would seem that my two daughters were dancing their little faces off, on the front porch, while my son sat on the step holding out his hat for donations.
They managed to make $10.00 before I stopped them.
My son, a pint sized Pimp Daddy.
Emily wasn’t as fond of dance as her sister.
She managed one year of dance lessons before she put her foot down and resolutely refused to attend another dance class, ever.
How did she put her foot down?
Did she inform me of her displeasure?
Did she sit down and bare her soul about the trauma she was experiencing as a result of dance class?
No.
Wanting to make sure that there was no way I could misinterpret what she meant by, “I don’t like dance,” Emily staged a public mutiny.
A VERY public mutiny.
During the long anticipated end of the year dance extravaganza that drew such large crowds it had to be performed two nights in a row.
While all the other powder blue tutued little girls, and the one powder blue suited little boy were on stage in front of hundreds of family and friends of the dancers, dancing their little hearts out, my powder blue tutued tot was engaging in a full frontal mutiny.
She crossed her arms, and stood completely still through the entire number.
Glaring at me in the audience.
Even though she had no idea where I was sitting.
Not a tap.
Not a smidgen of movement.
Not a hint of smile, nor the slightest indication of humour in those gigantic baby blues.
Out and out defiance.
I suspect that had I managed to make my way onto the stage, she would have dug her heels into the floor rather than dance.
My brother leans over while she is making a public spectacle of herself as whispers in my ear,
“Do you think she’s trying to tell you something?”
I guess she figured if she was gonna dance, she was gonna get paid for it.
Title Lyric: Dancing Queen by Abba
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