Mortifying.
A bit of advice about professional photo shoots: It’s best to not schedule one while you’re in the midst of moving, after you’ve packed away nearly your entire wardrobe. Or to have this photo session scheduled the very morning you discover a volcano has erupted on your chin. I was fifty two years old. Must I endure crow’s feet and acne?
I pushed these futile worries aside and instead agonized over items more under my control: my hair and makeup. During the two hours I attempted to pretty-up, I cringed and wept. I cemented my hair with hairspray, did a double-take in the bathroom mirror, and then crawled back into the shower to start from scratch. I finally picked an outfit from the mountain of already discarded clothes on the floor. I applied brown eyeshadow and a double-brush of mascara and, to appease my mother who often referred to me as her “Amish daughter,” I even swiped on some lipstick.
After all that prep work, my talented and obliging photographer, Alex, saw me through a couple hours of self-conscious grimacing and sweating. He managed to leave me with at least one photo in which I thought I appeared presentable: the one in which I posed with Ringo, the Wonder Retriever. Like Lassie, my pooch managed to save the day.
They say a picture may be worth a thousand words. This experience, however, was hardly worth half that.
Chapter 13:
HAIR TODAY—GONE TOMORROW
“So,” my hairstylist asked, dipping my head under the faucet. “Are we just trimming it up today?”
I’d obsessed over this for weeks. Whenever I spied an attractive woman with great hair—a college student with a thick flowing mane, a model with a cute pixie, or an actress with a fabulous bob on a TV legal drama—I would think, “Wow, if only I had hair like that, I bet I would look just as hot!” Chopping off my shoulder-length hair, far shorter than I’d ever worn it, evoked images of Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables. I only hoped it would entail less suffering, pain, and horror.
“Not this time,” I told my stylist, who’d been doing my hair for twenty years. “I’m thinking something different tonight. Something short. Really short. The shortest I’ve ever worn it.”
I attempted to explain exactly what I had in mind, biting my bottom lip as I considered how this monumental decision could potentially ruin the next eight weeks of my life.
But Pam simply cocked her head, glanced at my hair, and nodded. I reassured myself that this woman with my head—with practically my entire life—in her hands, was a paid professional. She made her living by making women beautiful. Surely, I would live to have no regrets.
Forty-five minutes later, she brushed the clippings off my shoulders and removed my apron. I gathered up the kind of courage generally reserved for a job interview or a root canal, and I peered into the mirror. I looked… gorgeous!
Well, not all of me, perhaps, but at least my hair. Yes, that looked amazing.
I beamed. “I love it!”
“Yeah? Good,” Pam said, with not an ounce of the desperate relief I was experiencing. I didn’t know what calming and confidence-building drugs all hairstylists must be required to consume, but I definitely wanted in on that shit before my next appointment.
I hesitated as I grabbed my checkbook. “So, you think I can do it just like this, myself, right?”
“Oh, absolutely,” she said over her shoulder, as she motioned to her next client. “Just make sure you use plenty of product.”
I contemplated the generic use of the word “product” for mysterious hair goo, as well as the word “plenty.” Hmm. Was that a tablespoon or a quarter cup? I’d prefer if she provided an exact measurement. Using my own judgment in the care of my hair had never proven successful.
“And when you’re blow-drying,” Pam continued, “be sure you hold the dryer nozzle underneath the roots of each section of hair as you lift it up, like I did.”
“Uh-huh.” My mind raced to recall that particular step of tonight’s appointment. This memory was fuzzy, since I spent much of the hair-drying segment shouting about the injustices of parenthood. And the injustices of my job. Or both. Who needs a therapist when you have a hair stylist?
“And then, don’t forget,” she added, “to spray it again.”
Again? Wait. Was I supposed to have already sprayed once before this step? I bit at the cuticles of my newly painted nails.
“That’s it, really,” Pam said, as she began shampooing the next client’s hair. “Except you’ll probably need to scrunch it a bit. Just a tiny piece at a time. Then, take a look and decide whether or not you want to use a curling iron on any section. But with the right amount of product and more scrunching, you should be all set. Unless you need to spray it again.”
On the drive home, I repeated this set of instructions to myself, over and over. It was an all-consuming lesson. I nearly ran a stop sign, slamming on my brakes just short of T-boning a minivan as I murmured my new mantra, “Product, dry, lift, spray, scrunch, curl, spray, scrunch again.”
After a sleepless night, I rose early. I ran methodically through every step of the process. My fingers began to ache from repeated scrunching.
I finally stepped back and surveyed myself in the mirror. I squinted. Huh. Was this how it looked last night? Perhaps I was not objective enough. I scrunched and sprayed one last time, shrugged, and continued getting ready for work.
Just as I headed out the door, my visiting son—who for twenty-plus years had appeared oblivious to every single one of my hair styles—stopped in the hallway to stare at me.
“Um, hey, Mom.” He cleared his throat. “Your hair looks a little, well, funny.”
I fought a swirling stomach of despair, as I realized that even this most lowbrow of opinions might be fully on-target. But I had no time for further reflection; I was already late for work.
I shuffled to my car. I spent my drive time peeking in the rearview mirror, scrunching some more. For the next eight hours, I hid inside my office—with the door closed.
Before going to bed that night, I showered and washed out the copious quantities of product and hairspray. I collapsed in bed with a wet head.
The next morning, I peeked in the mirror. At the sight of my bed head, I sighed. I didn’t have the energy to repeat the process all over again. In fact, I barely recalled the first two steps of the process. And I was fairly certain an entire bottle of product wouldn’t be enough.
I cocked my head. Maybe it wasn’t so bad just like this, I considered. Though short and splintery, and a little flat in a couple places, it had a tousled, carefree kind of look. I looked sort of like Meg Ryan in whatever-the-hell that one movie was. She didn’t fare so badly. Until that whole supposed plastic surgery fiasco.
I rubbed in a bit of product, scrunched a few spots, and called it a day.
That afternoon, I peeked in the mirror again. I wasn’t certain whom I saw in the reflection, but it sure didn’t look like me. Wow, was it short. It was nowhere near my normal look. But, I was slowly growing to like it. I wasn’t ready to submit my photo and application for Ms. America. But I no longer felt compelled to crawl, sobbing, into a corner of my closet either.
Was the new hairdo more or less attractive than my long-standing style? Most friends and family were complimentary. I wondered if it was truly the look of the new cut or simply the idea of change itself—something different to acknowledge about someone—which appealed to them.
Embracing change in our own life, however, is more challenging. Especially when it results in not only feeling but also looking so different. It’s difficult to notice, let alone evaluate, changes in our own character or personality. But alterations in our appearance jump out at us every time we simply look in a mirror—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I went with the new style for several months until, through pure procrastination, my hair grew out. When I finally arrived at the salon, returning to my old look seemed anticlimactic. Yet another major change seemed risky.
Pam stood over me, with scissors in hand. “So, what ar
e we doing today?”
I glanced up at her, shrugged, and said, “You’re driving. Just go for it.”
She winked at me, and the cycle of haircare chaos began all over again.
This time, I kept “plenty of product” on hand. It might never be the answer, but it was at least a damn good guess.
Chapter 14:
OUT ON THE STREET
I spied Linda as I pulled into the suburban shopping center. She stood in the median, looking disheveled with scruffy hair, grungy T-shirt, and sweatpants. A stuffed backpack was hitched across her shoulders. She held a cardboard sign reading, “Homeless and Hungry.” And, in smaller scrawled letters, “Anything helps! Thank you!”
Wary and suspicious of begging strangers, I had passed by people like her for years. While I sometimes felt bad enough to wonder about their situation and their welfare, I rarely stopped to offer a dollar or even a warm smile. It was easier to not become emotionally involved or financially invested.
But this afternoon, as I bit my bottom lip and glanced back at the line of cars trailing me, I paused. I leaned out my window and offered to buy this woman lunch.
Linda hesitated briefly, before nodding. “That would be great. Thanks.”
We met at the entrance to a casual chain restaurant, just across the parking lot. After I paid for our order, I found a corner table in the back, where I hoped we’d have some privacy. But the restaurant was busy. A group of teenagers sat across from us, two of them in shirts bearing the logo of the private high school my youngest son attended. They eyed Linda, likely recalling her standing with her sign by the side of the road. Their sideways glances, either out of curiosity or discomfort, persisted for a half hour.
Linda sat across from me, both of us awkward as we faced each other. How to make small talk with a homeless stranger? We started out with the safest of topics: the weather, the traffic, the food. And Linda gradually opened up.
She was a local girl, or woman, to be exact. At a closer look, I decided she was probably in her late twenties. She told me she was homeschooled, until her parents could no longer afford the curriculum. I knew much of that was now provided online for free, but was likely not so accessible when she was younger. She’d gone on to get her GED, testing above the average. In her early twenties, she scrounged up the funding to take classes at a nearby business college, where she received a degree in entrepreneurial business.
“My dream is to open my own pizza place,” she said. “I’d like to have a sit-down restaurant, with twenty-four-hour delivery. I’m really passionate about the pizza industry.”
“Passion is good,” I said, nodding. “Passion leads to setting goals.”
But Linda said she never found a position in which she could really use her education or skills. She worked a number of jobs, and now, at the age of twenty-nine, she found herself out of work again.
“My last job was cleaning rooms at a motel. I kept bringing home bed bugs, which upset the people I was staying with, so I had to quit.”
She recently applied for federal assistance, but this process took time, she explained. Plus, there was a glitch with her paperwork. She was still waiting. She’d applied for work through a local temp agency and was hopeful she might find a job that way.
“Meanwhile, I keep looking. I’ve applied at all these places,” she said, waving a hand across the window at the line of restaurants along the busy roadway. “Right before you came along, a guy stopped to tell me IHOP was hiring, so I’ll head over there next.”
Why was it so difficult for her to find work? I glimpsed her old, unkempt clothing and her stubby hair. Was it her appearance? Or was it something else?
She saw me glancing at her head and she ran a hand across her scalp. “This probably doesn’t help,” she said. “I had to shave my head when my kids came home again with a bad case of lice. I know I look odd.”
Linda had two sons, ages three and four. Seven months ago, their father quit paying the meager child support he once provided, although she knew he had a job that paid him under the table. He didn’t visit. Occasionally, he called to ask how the children were doing. She was angry with him but tried to keep some peace, since she wanted her boys to have a relationship with their father.
“I want to say to him, ‘Really? Today, all of a sudden, you wonder how they are? Did you think about them last week or last month? Do you really care?’ But he’s their father, and I’m their mother.” She lifted her chin, with defiant pride. “And so I tell him, ‘They’re terrific kids. And we are doing the best we can.’”
If things got really tough, Linda moved around to look for work. She hesitated to constantly move the boys, especially to places she didn’t think were safe or appropriate. She relied on a couple close and responsible friends to temporarily keep them.
“All that’s important is that my kids are safe. I do what I need to, but I try to not let it affect them. Your children come first. That’s the way I was raised. The children always come first.”
“Do you have parents?” I asked. “Could they help?”
She shook her head. “My mom has had mental health issues my whole life. She worries a lot. If she knew what I was going through, well, it wouldn’t be good for her. I try not to tell her much.”
Her mother’s mental illness was a telling detail. That, along with Linda’s mention of being “homeschooled”—which I now guessed meant her education had more likely been neglected—made me conclude Linda hadn’t managed to come first for her own mother. She never mentioned a father.
I studied her. I knew mental health was a family issue, affecting children either through heredity or through environment. I gazed at her wide-set, clear eyes, set off by her pale skin. A half hour spent with someone was not nearly enough to know what all was at play. Did she have her own mental issues? A lifetime of hard knocks? Or was it possible drugs were involved? No, I didn’t think that was the case, and I was fairly savvy to that.
She seemed to read my mind. “I haven’t given up on finding a job, and I’ve tried to find other assistance, for me and my kids,” she said. “But most seem to be shelters that focus on homeless people with addiction problems. They want to get people like that off the streets, so they can get clean. I understand that. But I think sometimes people like us get left behind.”
I knew organizations existed to help people like Linda. They must. But, as I sat across from her, I couldn’t conjure up the name of a single one, other than a downtown Toledo soup kitchen. If I—a well-educated woman with Internet aptitude and community connections—couldn’t name any, how was someone like Linda supposed to find the help she needed?
“I just try to remain positive,” she said. “I pray a lot. I know God wouldn’t give me anything I couldn’t handle. I’m sure things will get better. They always get better, you know?”
I forced a nod as I swirled a spoon in my chicken soup. I would have liked to honestly agree. I wanted to believe. Yet, I wasn’t so sure.
Linda said begging on the street didn’t come easy. “I don’t like to be out there, asking for help. But I do because I feel like I have few options right now. And every little bit helps. If I get a free meal like this, any money I get can then go toward my boys,” she said. “I just accept what I need or what I get, gladly, and then I move on. Sometimes the police tell me to leave. But honestly, I try not to be greedy. Other people need help, too.”
Most people who drove by her didn’t want to help though. The majority simply ignored her. Others leaned out their car windows and yelled, “Get a job!”
“I’d like to tell them I’m trying,” she said. “But I seldom get that chance.”
Some people went beyond shouting out their contempt. Once, a man stopped, handed her a package, and said, “You’d better eat this, or I’ll be all over you!”
She said she pulled the foil off the paper plate to discover a pile of regurgitated food.
“I don’t know how he could do that.” She lowered her head and then glanc
ed back up. “How could he look me in the eye and hand that to me?”
I shook my head, trying to imagine how that experience might affect a person. I realized I wasn’t the only one taking a chance that afternoon. A war-torn and weary Linda had taken a chance on me, too.
As we finished our lunch, she looked down at her plate. Half her barbecued chicken remained. “I think I’ll take this home, if it’s OK with you,” she said. “I have some bread. This will make a nice sandwich for one of the boys.”
We headed outside. I reached into my purse and handed her five dollars. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t carry much cash. I generally just use my debit card.” First-world problems. At least for some of us.
Linda smiled. “Every little bit helps. And really, you’ve already helped a lot.”
We shook hands, and I climbed into my minivan. I watched her cross the parking lot. We waved at each other as I drove away. I pulled onto the highway, headed back to my condo in the suburbs.
I never got Linda’s last name. I looked for her for months afterward, searching the faces of every panhandler I passed, those strangers for whom I now more frequently stopped to offer a couple dollars and a simple “Good luck to you.”
More than one reader told me I was scammed, manipulated by Linda through some made-up story. Yes, I knew scammers existed. Without hearing their testimony and without knowing their true story, I couldn’t be judge or jury in every case. All I knew was that offering a few dollars now and then wouldn’t hurt me a bit, yet it could help someone who truly may be down on her luck.
I never saw Linda on the street again. I hoped that, just maybe, she’d finally found a job. That she and her two sons found a safe place to live, together, for good. That her story had a happy ending. I wanted to believe that I’d someday find myself eating in a pizza parlor and Linda would stop by my table, smile, and ask, “How was your meal today?”
Finding My Badass Self Page 6