For the past year, the long-distance relationship that I was trying to carry on just wasn’t working out. The distance wasn’t an issue at first… or, at least, infatuated, that is what I told myself. But all of the time that I spent traveling so that we could be together became a strain. The thought that I couldn’t just pop in for a quickie made me anxious and lonely. The only healthy, sane thing to do was to call its quits and find myself a new hairdresser.
Oh, it was hard. My ex-hairdresser Lauren was probably the love of my hair’s life; in addition to her cutting and coloring talent, she had a genuinely sweet personality and a knack for chatting about anything. Four years ago, she brought my hair back from the brink of chemical overdose and nursed it back to life in time for my wedding two years ago — the most important hair event of any women’s life. She gave me a fresh coat of blond four day’s prior to the big day. “So when’s the wedding?” she had asked. “Oh, on Saturday,” I said, and Lauren began cracking up. “Any other woman would be in here, freaking the eff out, but you’re so laid back about your hair!”
It’s true, I am shamefully laid back about my hair. I know that my hair hasn’t been a positive feature of mine since I was a six-year blond cherub, back before it began getting increasingly ashy until I dyed it black at age 14. And my real hair color hasn’t seen the light of day since…
Until last August. That was my last hair appointment with Lauren, though she didn’t know it at the time and I didn’t have the guts to tell her. But ever since I switched jobs and went from working in Boston to the suburbs, getting to Lauren’s salon in downtown Boston because an odyssey that involved leaving work early — for my HAIR — and consumed an entire weeknight. It seemed like the best thing to do was to break up with Lauren, and while I was at it, break up with expensive, time-consuming single-process color.
Oh, Lauren, baby. I miss you. I miss your hands running through my hair, teasing out my ashy brown roots with a lathered paint brush of ammonia and peroxide. I miss the tug of the hairbrush and the stinging heat of your blow dries. I miss regaling you with the tedious details of my life, and you smiling as if enthralled, as if you have never met someone who works in a cubicle and pounds keys for a living. I miss your dedication to my hair — always striving to making it as blond and healthy as it was when I was 6. You saved my hair from myself.
