As I turn off the highway and park, I’m not thinking of my hair appointment as anything special. After all, I come here every five weeks or so to get my hair cut.
The big pot of flowering plants on the porch sets the mood, a small reminder of how pleasant an afternoon at the hair salon always is.
I open the door, and the receptionist greets me with a smile and an offer to get me some coffee or tea. Okay, you say, that’s what receptionists are supposed to do. But isn’t it nice that that’s one of her duties and that she seems to enjoy doing it and that she knows my name without looking at her appointment book?
I think so.
I hang my jacket on the rod that must have been part of a coat closet when the salon was a private home.
The owner walks by with a “Hi. How’s it going?” Matt’s always friendly, always energetic. The room pulses with his energy and good cheer. A moment later, he runs up the stairs and is gone.
I grab a magazine–People or Vogue or O, magazines I only read when I’m here. I won’t get far, though. Lindsey, my stylist, is usually on time.
After a quick look at fashions that are beautiful-but-not-for-me or strange or even downright ugly, Lindsey tells me she’ll be with me in a minute.
Lindsey is a delight. She’s about the age of my youngest daughter. One of her sons is about the age of my younger grandson.
Every five or six weeks, we spend an hour together. She tells me what she’s been up to; I tell her what I’ve been doing. We share tales about ten-year-old boys–her son and my grandson. We discuss movies, books, and the weather.
And we talk politics–not too loudly, of course. We don’t want to annoy clients who might have sympathies different from ours. The hair salon is meant to be a happy place.
These days I get a simple haircut, one that’s very much like my one-year-old hairstyle.
Early on, my mom introduced me to curlers and perms.
Even though I was born with straight hair, under her influence and the styles of the time, I came to think curls were necessary. This hairstyle Mom tried out on me was the one she wore on her wedding day.
I used to walk into a hair salon hoping to be transformed. Sometimes I’d have my straight hair permed. Below is a new perm on a bad hair day. I think this was for the DMV.
I’d go from long hair to short, bangs to no bangs.
In recent years, I finally gave up and allowed my hair to be its natural self. (My bangs are a little longer than when I was a year old.)
So now when I enter a hair salon, I don’t have to worry about being transformed. I can just sit back and enjoy a pleasant hour with Lindsey and all the other friendly people at my favorite hair salon.
In elementary school, I was so envious of my friend who had her hair permed. (However, in hindsight, it might have looked terrible on me.)
I’m a low-fuss kind of gal, so I really appreciate you embracing your natural hair.
My daughters, who all have straight hair, tried out a perm when they were in high school. They were kind of cute, but they never tried it again.
Your hair looks nice the way it is. It suits you.
I loved the post! Going to the salon there seems a very nice and relaxing experience. Here when I go to have my hair cut (I only go once a year or so…) it’s like a lottery; some stylists try to sell me hair care products or some treatment (which are very expensive, the hair cut itself is cheap). So sometimes I just pretend I can’t speak Chinese so they don’t nag me.
Yeah, I don’t like it when I get pestered to buy expensive products. In this salon, they have them near the cash register. I’m glad they don’t push them on me.
When we lived in the Philippines, the stylists were always very nice, but a little shy. I ended up with a different person each time I came in, so there was no opportunity to develop a relationship with her. The nice thing was, they always gave you a neck and shoulder massage free.
The bottom shot beats the “DMV shot” hands down! It’s a becoming style to match that smile!
I’ve had some pretty bad photos for my driver’s license. I’ve had better luck on passport photos. If I remember right, my first passport photo included my children. Maybe they were too young to have their own passports.
I love this post! I might have to steal it as I have not written about hair in ages! Also, I just noticed looking at all your photos that you have great eyebrows 🙂 You’d be the envy over here 😛
I wouldn’t call it stealing, Lani. It’s nice to get ideas from each other. My dad had prominent black Scottish eyebrows. My sister calls them magic marker eyebrows.
Hahahhaha. That’s awesome.
Haircuts are a major trauma for me. Somehow I got a really bizarre one last spring that took most of the year to grow out. It was a stylist I had been going to and she must have had a bad day. I went back to another stylist I had used many years ago. She’s expensive and hard to get into but it’s not as traumatic. As we get older we like simple. Sometimes I dash out of the house without looking to see how my hair looks. I just don’t care anymore as long as it’s not a big knotted mess.
I hope my stylist keeps doing a good job. (Of course, sometimes it turns out better than other times.) But after developing a relationship with her, I find it almost impossible to leave her for someone else.
I can hardly believe how much time I spent on my hair at other times in my life. Now I give it a quick comb in the morning, and that’s it. In the winter, my hair is hiding under a hat most of the time anyway.
I can’t believe all the time I spent worrying about it! Now it is what it is. Even a bad haircut will grow out.
We always seem to want the kind of hair we don’t have. I like your straight hair–mine is somewhere between curly and wavy.
And I can always tell what sort of hair a stylist has by the way she finishes my hair. If she blows it dry straight, it’s because she has curly hair. If she puts in product and leaves it wavy, she’s got straight hair.
I think you put your finger on it. I have a friend who has just the right amount of curl in her hair naturally, and when she has a good-hair day, I’m jealous. I think it’s so easy for her. Her hair falls just right with no effort. But then I remember her bad-hair days. So I guess it must not always be that easy for her.
Oh, ain’t no hair day as bad as a wavy-haired bad hair day!
Well … a flat straight hair day can be pretty disgusting.
I love this photo journey, Nicki. The last one of you is great! Like Jill said, this brought back memories of good times and not so good times. Like the time a new hair stylist cut off way too much. I cried all the way home.
I looked through a couple of old boxes of photos for this post. I definitely found some unattractive hairstyles–sometimes the hair salon’s fault, more often mine.
I really loved seeing all of these photographs, Nicki. I do think the last one is the best. This brought back memories of a perm my sister and her friend gave me as a teenager. They left it on way too long and I ended up looking like Shirley Temple. 🙂 Blue is certainly your color!
Thanks, Jill. That last photo was taken for the church directory. I think I’ll use it for an author photo for my next novel.
I think most of us who have had perms can think back to disappointing outcomes. Even if you ask for just a loose curl, it always seems to turn out way too tight.
I think that’s a great idea, Nicki. It really is a beautiful photograph.
I wasn’t expecting much in a process that included everyone in the parish. But the photographer knew how to take a good portrait. I was grateful to him for making an effort to do a good job.
It sounds like a comfortable experience each time you to to the hairdresser’s – which is what you want. I much rather go in knowing I will get ‘the usual’ hair cut rather than trying something experimental – and I have a regular stylist who knows how to give me the choppy layers in my hair which I want. Finding a good stylist can be hard…can be a nightmare sometimes. Interesting you mentioned permed hair. My mum was a fan of permed hair and curls during a point in her life (her hair is naturally straight). Personally, I don’t think that look suits me and I do like my straight hair.
Very nice new photo, Nicki 🙂
Yes, trusting my stylist is one reason I’m comfortable visiting this hair salon. Also I enjoy spending time with the friendly people who work there.
It sounds like your mom never “experimented” on your hair. That’s good. When I was a child, perms and Shirley Temple curls were all the thing. Then when I was in high school, most of us slept on curlers. It seems more sensible to have a more natural hairstyle as I do now.
My mum did experiment on my hair. She liked tying two ponytails in my hair, and putting ribbons around those ponytails when I was in primary school. Many other Asian girls wore their hair like that too. It was a bit of a phase I went through.
Your two pony tails with ribbons sound cute. My mother’s experiments seemed to me to be a little more extreme.