SOL March 17: Hair Color

My bangs have been pink for about six years now. When the color is fresh, it’s bright neon, but it fades with washing to a pale pastel.

            Why pink? Why not?  As a teenager, I pulled out the first gray hairs that popped up against my natural dark brown. Into my twenties, I decided to let them stay; I had natural streaking, something my friends paid lots of money for. My mother became all gray when she was in her forties, made no attempt to hide that fact, and looked terrific.

            Over the decades, I played with hair-color color as the balance turned more gray than dark, my hairdresser coloring strips dark and leaving other strips natural. When I hit 70, I had no idea what my natural hair color was, so let everything grow out. That’s how I discovered that it was mostly white. After a couple of years of all white hair, I found it to be boring. My hair hadn’t been one color since my twenties., but I wasn’t going to try to make my hair a “hair color.” What other colors are out there?

            When I found this neon pink, I knew that was what I wanted. Usually, I get the color refreshed every six to eight weeks, but pandemic conditions have worked against a process that’s indoors at a salon for at least two hours. (Just doing the bangs is a delicate process that I want my hairdresser to do; it wouldn’t look nearly as good if I did it myself.) I’d gotten the color refreshed just before the pandemic locked us down, and it faded almost to invisibility until last November, coincidentally the day that Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election.

            Then came the winter Covid surge. No more hair color appointments—until today. I feel so much better.

 

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I’m participating in the 14th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 17 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!