The Story of My Hair 💇🏻‍♀️

When I was born, my grandmother tied a strawberry pink ribbon around a curl on top of my head, my first hairstyle.

In elementary school, I wore my stick-straight brown hair in a pony tail, with bangs across my forehead.

Closer to my teens, my hair took on a darkly burnished auburn sheen, not quite the brighter red of my mom’s hair. She braided my hair each morning before school. My dad called me Pocahontas after the Native American princess.

When I was thirteen, my mom took me to her beautician to style my hair for my Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Martha sat me down in her hydraulic chair and pumped it up to the highest level, my feet dangling well above the floor.

She applied her scissors to my loosened braids and cut them off—completely—then shaped the jagged remnants of what once was my pride and joy. Wielding the pointed end of her rat-tail comb, she spun tiny pin-curl mousetraps all over my head. If I had any thoughts of escaping the chair, I would have had to jump two feet to the floor—and challenge the two women who, unbeknownst to me, had planned a primitive coming of age ritual.

I’m certain that Martha promised my mom that she would transform me into a pretty and proper young lady for the upcoming event. When she finished, I stared in disbelief at the clipped, matronly ringlets around my face. A fringe of bangs emerged out from under the curls and lined up like commas across the top inch of my forehead.

Too stunned to cry, I followed my mom out the door to face the world with embarrassment and an insecure sense of myself, even more so than the thirteen-year old that walked in.

So far, this was the worst week of my entire life. Dad looked at the transformation with a puzzled expression and no longer called me Pocahontas. I guess I had come of age after all.

During high school in the fifties and college in the sixties, I suffered through various bad haircuts, some with stray wisps that winged out over my ears. I never felt that I looked quite right, contributing to my view of myself as a misfit in high school years.

Finally, after moving to Boston in my early twenties, I figured out that I could grow my hair and feel better about my appearance.

My hair took a dark turn and lost its reddish sheen but otherwise cooperated fully with the trends of the times. It grew wildly in length and volume, upwards and sideways as well as down. After a shampoo, it lay flat and wet, but over the space of an hour increased in size and frizz into an Afro of impressive proportions.

With that, my female power and confidence came to life.

In 1968, I met a handsome Newbury Street hairdresser, “Mr. Paul,” at a New Year’s Eve party on Beacon Hill. We married in 1972 at my age twenty-seven and his age thirty-six. The week before, he worked day and night to prepare the house and yard for the outdoor ceremony. He had no time to get a haircut for himself, or give haircuts to his two little boys.

But early on our August wedding day, Paul drove me to his beauty shop and washed my hair, then blew it out straight so that it fell softly over my back. I remember the touch of his steady hands weaving fresh daisies from the garden throughout my hair, arranging them into a wreath, making me into a bride.

These, the last private moments before our marriage under the weeping willow tree, our wedding canopy.

ELAINE TUNICK TOTH

In my mid-thirties, I took our son Max to visit my childhood friend in New Jersey. Elaine was a brilliant artist with two sons—the little one, Frankie, was Max’s age. The occasion of this visit was a sad one—she was gravely ill at the age of thirty-seven and time was short for our reunion.

Elaine was intrigued by the crescent-moon barrette securing my hair to the side. While our boys played outside, she took Polaroid pictures of me for reference to sketch my portrait in charcoal. I returned a month later with the barrette to sit for her as she carefully applied the final touches.

If I save one object from out of a burning building, it will be this portrait.

Rest In Peace, Elaine (1945-1983)

BRAVISSIMO HAIRDRESSER

Over the decades, my hair time-traveled through the various lengths and looks of the eighties, nineties, and beyond.

Paul favored shorter styles. The skilled hairstylist is really an artist, preferring to play, shape, experiment, and create changing looks, applying his instinct for balance and design.

Yes, he consulted with me—no hacking off braids this time—but Paul drew the line at instructions such as, “Take a little bit off here, leave a little bit there.” This interference with the process annoyed him whether coming from a customer or from me. “You can leave your hair long, no problem. You can show me a picture. You can freak out in advance about the outcome. Just don’t tell me how to cut hair.”                            

Paul, the master of the precision cut that fell into place after a shake of the head, handled his scissors effortlessly. I could barely see the sharpened silver blades flying around me, never touching my scalp. Then, he stepped on the hydraulic pedal to let me down, gently, signaling the next customer to approach.

He washed and cut my hair for the last time for our daughter’s marriage in June of 2013. I asked him to color it chestnut red-brown for the wedding day, my natural shade from years ago.

Paul died before the end of the year. I let the red grow out to gray and had my hair shorn to remove the last traces of color.

ANDREW GOULD

No one else had touched my hair for over forty years. Many months later, I decided to find a hairdresser in New York where I often visited our daughter on the West Side and Paul’s son on the East Side. I saw an older gentleman through his shop window and walked in, not yet sure if I could sit in a new chair and hand myself over.

Andrew was intelligent, funny, engaging, interested in my legal career and political views. Like Paul, he was a raconteur, and so I warmed up to him in the familiar circle of space shared between hairdresser and client.

By then, my hair was completely gray, something like the tone of brushed chrome. Shampooed and ready for the next step, I thought quickly to tell Andrew, “How about something short and edgy, to display my true color. No bangs, please! Something that says, this woman got her haircut in New York City!”

I enjoyed the dramatic look, the trips back and forth, the feeling of courage that grew each time Andrew performed his own magic on me—Pocahontas, minus the braids.

Sadly, he passed away two years later. I decided not to look for another hairdresser.

Looking back at those years, I realize that my appointments with Andrew were so much more than business or fashion—he played his own very important part on my healing path.

Ironic, isn’t it, that a talented hairdresser came into my life, again, and generously gave me a push forward. I willingly surrendered to the “magical thinking” that author Joan Didion identified in the first year of grief, and believed that Paul sent him to me…..

ME

Silver-gray cut short and close morphed into silver-gray uncut, wavy and long. I eased naturally into the muted tones surrounding me. They felt as pleasing and desirable as the long ago burnished red of my childhood and the rich, dark brunette of the confident and loved woman I became.

At this time in my life—Into the Seventies—I will choose silver to define me. These are my “Silver Years,” glinting on the outside, faceted on the inside, as I step out to meet the light this day will bring.