My mother worked as a part-time hairdresser when I was a little boy. She didn't own her own salon or worked for one. Mostly she went around the neighborhood and cut women's hair in the comfort of their own homes. She earned just enough to buy groceries and fresh food from the market. She was no New York or French hairstyling virtuoso either. She just did basic trims, perms and an occasional makeover.
One of the fringe benefits of her being a part-time hairdresser was I never had to go the barbershop. She cut my own hair. But she took forever doing it. Whoever heard of a two-hour home barber's cut? It's as if she lingered at the job not so much because there was so much hair to cut as there were endless stories to tell me. She told me stories about my growing-up years, neighborhoods we had lived in, jobs she had held--even an occasional anecdote about how I got beaten up by some playground bully in the third grade. And she told these stories while cutting my hair. It used to annoy me that I could hear other children in the neighborhood playing, and I was stuck on that stool while mother had to trim that last ever lock of hair. The hair must have grown as fast as she could cut them because the job never seemed to end. I would finally jump off the stool, cry "Enough!" and run away. It was part necessity, part ordeal and as regular as clockwork. When you're a teenager, I think 50% of what you eat turns into hair because every six weeks or so, mother would be hunting me down around the house to sit me on that stool for my regular haircut.
My mother is now 76 years old. Arthritis has ravaged her hands and she could no longer wield a pair of scissors like when she was younger.
I'm now in my late 40s and if there was a place I could go where they could make hair GROW, I would happily spend all day at that place. One day my mother hunkered over behind me as I watched TV in the living room. She had read an article on herbal remedies and had plucked some juicy aloe vera leaves from the garden outside. Splitting them open to reveal the rich gooey paste inside the leaves, she began to rub it onto my scalp. She told me she saw someone on the nature channel talk about a friend of a brother's cousin's sister-in-law--or some other drawn out relationship like that--who had used this medicinal plant on his scalp every night and saw miraculous hair regrowth. But it took forever to work the goo into the scalp, so she took advantage of the time to tell me stories about my growing up years, neighborhoods we have lived in, job she has held---and how I got beaten up by a playground bully in third grade.
I've heard all the stories before. But hearing mother tell them all over again brought back happy memories of the stories, and of the storytelling. My hair must be growing slower than a redwood tree because mother thought it necessary to keep up the rubbing forever. I think when you're 40-something, 50% of what you eat turns into dead hair follicles.
My mother, the part-time hairdresser, has taken a new fancy. Instead of cutting my hair, she's working hard to bring some of that hair she cut BACK.
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