And So Many

I must admit, I didn’t do everything Mom expected, but I have never forgotten her constant advice regarding female tresses.

My Mother was adamant that, “When a woman stops caring for her hair, she’s finished.”

Those words of wisdom are embedded on my heart, and I have subsidized many hair stylists throughout the decades while I religiously followed her admonition,.

The amazing thing, however, as I look back on the time we shared, is that I have absolutely no recollection of Mom ever visiting a beauty salon.

Anna King Donlon was 87 when she took her last trip, and she did it without a gray hair on her beautiful head. Yet a Clairol box was never seen in any of her homes, and it wasn’t a topic either my Sister or I dared to introduce..

As youngsters, Ellen and I were taken religiously first for haircuts, and then later for the memorable permanents that left us, well, let’s not discuss that. It isn’t a happy memory.

But our Mother, whose hair was raven black, shiny and lustrous only stood by and watched as our locks were shorn or curled. She never sat in the client’s chair.

Last week I remembered that enigma when Joan, my forever friend, and I discussed Ballyage. I described it as two hours and many dollars spent to achieve the same color she and I shared the year I was twelve and she was thirteen.

Then I remembered our two beautiful Mothers, walking together down 58th Street daily to work, with coiffures intact and I wondered how they did it.

And so many other far more important things.