Hair and thereby

(Well, hell, it was a long day yesterday and I never got around to writing this, which is excusable since I have hardly ever missed a day, right? And does anyone really read it, or is it just self-indulgent self-expression, as someone I know says about blogs in general? But consider this a double – for yesterday and today…)

It has been a very long week, which is not said in any kind of complaining manner, but just as a statement of fact. While life at work has been a story of overloaded brain cells (yes, I do have more than one and they do spark into function every now and then), compensating for lack of staff and coordinating with a boss who happens to be many miles away, life at home is at the moment all about painters, white plaster of Paris dust and complete organisational chaos and makeshift everything, from baths to meals to sleeping arrangements. It is not funny, but it is still sort of maybe perhaps almost fun. Hence the discombobulation of mind and body, you will understand…

I met the same state of being yesterday, when I was at the salon. You may ask what I was doing there if my everyday existence is such a mess, but the explanation is simple: my hair-expert gives appointments that are not easy to get; I needed a little stress relief; my hair needed it more than me; and I had errands in the area in any case. So I sat there being washed and dried and unguent-ed and otherwise dealt with, even as I made mental lists of things to be found and done, work to be finished that day (and the blog was one of those, only it got left out) and dinner and other assorted chores to be handled. I was relaxed, since I knew the people who were doing things to my hair and scalp, and was able to switch them off except to listen to instructions such as ‘Lift your head’, ‘Lean back’ and ‘Go for a wash’.

But the lady in the chair next to mine was rather more stressed, in so many ways. It was her first time at that particular salon, her first time with the trichologist who has known me and my hair for so many years. After much reassurance, and some gentle chatting from me to tell her how happy I was with the services offered, she settled a bit. But we soon found out why she was so hyper and edgy. Her daughter was getting married next week and she wanted to look her best, but believed that it would take a short while. When she heard that it would be at least a couple of hours, she started panicking. And then resigned herself to making lots of phone calls instead of rushing madly around doing the talking to whoever in person.

But what made me smile was how she slowly unwound from the tight, complicated knot that she had been tangled in. Within a few moments of her treatment starting, she began smiling – at me, at the hair lady, at the manager of the salon, at herself. Her feet, which were clenched in her rather ugly sandals, stretched and then coiled into a lotus position on her chair. And her fingers, from being tightly entwined, were playing with her mobile phone keys, smoothing her eyebrows and gesturing to add colour to what she was saying. Very soon, she was talking to us – me as the uninvolved onlooker and observer of human behaviour – telling us about her family. She showed off pictures of her daughter, the one who was getting married, and told us what the menu would be for the reception dinner and how three days of celebration had to be melted into one, since some elderly relative had died and it was not ‘right’ to get too ostentatious.

Soon we knew more about her than we wanted to. How her husband was a diamond merchant, how her son was in Boston studying, how her daughter was marrying someone who lived and worked in Singapore, where they had a house. We knew about her visits to the skin specialist, how the lady needed to get her clothes for the wedding in order, where and when they had been shopping, what they had bought and how much they had spent and how she was completely horrified by some of the prices that were being quoted so lavishly at her.

At which point I was done with and ready to leave. Saying my fond farewells to my friend and her helpers, collecting my present from her and then making a quick exit took longer than I expected. So I missed the lady with the wedding completely, thinking of her only when I was well on my way back to work, and too much of the same stressful hassle that made her and all else work-unrelated fade from my mind. Until just now…