The curly-hair club

My hair stylist is freshly back from Greece, which is where many years ago she, an Irishwoman, met her husband, who is Arabic, and now where they, who are Americans, wish to retire when the time comes (she feeling that the time to do so is PAST, but that is another subject). She was evidently somewhat reluctant to return home ("kicking and screaming" is I believe how she described her forced entry onto the plane). 


She lamented that she'd brought back some extra pounds in various places on her person, and was now on a low-carb diet trying to shed them. "All I do," she confided, "is fantasize about bread." This was particularly difficult, she said, because there was a bakery very near the salon, and all day while cutting hair she could think only of "The baguettes! The croissants!" at the bakery. And drool over the thought.


She is now sporting short curly hair, which I remarked upon, as it was a distinct departure from her usual look. Her hair, normally, is even straighter and thinner and finer than mine, which is about as straight and thin and fine as you can get and still HAVE hair.


"Oh," she said airily when I mentioned her curls, "my hair is wantin' to go curly now, can you believe it?" She lowered her voice. "I think it's hormones," she said. She described how she had been born with blonde, curly hair, and how as a result she had been very cute as a child. In puberty it had gone completely straight and stayed that way until recently, when it had begun to curl again.


"I see the same thing in some of my clients," she said. "It's got to be hormones."


I noted that something very similar had happened to one of my sisters, whose hair, seemingly overnight, went from straight and fine and thin to Shirley Temple. She now looked so much like our aunt that it was a little unnerving.


I could look forward to no such curling of my own hair, I thought almost wistfully. MY hair had never had an ounce of curl, except for the few times I'd had perms, which had turned out to be unfortunate mistakes and would not be repeated.


At this point in our conversation, the stylist waved to another client who'd come in, and then said to the woman in a surprised voice, "You've got curls! I love your curls!"


The stylist stared at her a minute, then said to me in a slightly lowered voice, "Hmmmm. SHE must have the hormonal thing going on too. Her hair's always been straight." Although she held tightly to the hormone theory, she also mused about whether there was something in the water.


"Obviously not the water I drink," I said.


Left out of the curly-hair club, I encouraged my hair to just be itself. Evidently I was not encouraging enough, as even the stylist had difficulty getting my hair to exhibit any body at all as she styled it. "I tried my best," she said finally, "but..." She shrugged an apology.


My limp, short, straight, fine, thin, noncurly hair and I went home and eventually to bed, where I dreamed happily of baguettes and croissants. And Greece.