Under the influence

I blame the Pantene commercials.

You know, the ones with the perfect, straight, shiny sheaths of hair, that the models twist and turn this way and that way, sometimes, into a smooth, not-a-split-end-in-sight knot?

I'm obsessed.  I want hair like that. 

Pro-V, shmo-V, does that exist anywhere in nature? 

My hair has always been really short.  Gosh, since before Nolan was born.  The last time I sported a sheath of long, beautiful hair, I think I was in the fourth grade.

I cut it short because I wanted to be different.  Aside from sidetrips mimicking Dorothy Hammill and Lady Di, it's always been a little different from my peers.  My Mom is lucky I didn't start messing with the color until after I left the house.  

Well, not if you don't count the high school disasters Jen and I put ourselves through  courtesy of Sun-In.  Oh, my, God--what a bad idea...brunettes, with wannabe blonde highlights that were actually just this side of cockroachy red-orange.  At least our tans were fabulous.  I've even endured a couple of bad perms, but who hasn't?

Never again, I swore, the last time I got all that mess out and finally got my own color back.

Enter the hairdresser. 

A good hairdresser is like your best friend, sister, family.   She knows of your hair's sins; has seen your true, unmadeup visage squinting at her from the chair; and still, she convinces you that you are, indeed, beautiful, if only for a moment.  Part confidante, part magician, you can't help but be seduced by her charm into believing it.  You don't ever want to lose her, once she's found.  Really.

Some of the greatest traumas of my life have involved finding a new hairdresser.  (Ladies, you know I'm not being melodramatic.)

The one I'm seeing now I've been going to for not quite a year.  We're still getting to know each other.  She is nice, dependable, and adorable.  We even share the common thread of our husband's professions.  By some strange coincidence, they work for the same city and their paths have crossed a couple of times.

And when I leave her capable hands, I feel fantastic. 

I told her a while ago that I wanted to grow out my hair.  She's been encouraging, which is helpful, because I was prepared this time to go in and beg her to cut it off.  I was this () close to going back to the short-short. 

But we talked about it, and she trimmed it up instead.  ("You look younger with it longer."  Sold!)  I had some Hair 101 to go over, as I was having some trouble styling it.  It's got a wave that doesn't cooperate that I have never had to deal with before. 

It is fab-u-lous.  I love it.  Oh, it's still short, but I can see it going somewhere from here. 

While it may not look like the Pantene commercial, it feels like it when I'm driving with the window down and the wind is rushing through it.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille.