What a Drag it is Getting Old - My Hair

Starting at the top of my personal issues, is my hair.  I probably have more "hair" issues than anyone I know.  When I was little, my mother would always say,

"Tamara would be pretty if she just had pretty hair." 

The last time I heard her say this was when I was 29 at my graduation party in front of all my friends.  Note, I sent myself to college, which is why it took me ten years of night school.  And, I paid for the party.  Thanks mom for sharing.  She probably still says this behind my back.  Yes, years of therapy spent, and still spending, on this one. 

So my hair ...  I have a lot of it, I've been told by hair stylists.  But, its baby fine, super straight, and won't hold a curl if there is a cloud anywhere between New York and Iowa.   Thankfully, now it is the style.  People pay hundreds of dollars to get their hair to look like mine (while my mother just can't understand it).  But back in the late 70's and 80's, it was not the style.  I tried everything to keep it curled, only to fry my hair out completely. 

I then moved away from trying to curl it to coloring it.  It's been every color of the rainbow.  I don't know if I was just trying to make mom mad or if I was trying to make my mom happy.  Maybe by changing the color, my mom would like it, but that didn't happen. 

When I was 30, divorcing my first husband, and finally asserting some true independence, I cut my butt-length, over-processed, then blond hair into a bob -- colored it red.  I liked the red.  Sixteen years later, I'm loving the red.  But now, life is truly busy.  My colorist is in downtown and I'm on the Upper East Side.  I just can't run next door to get my hair done.  Time flies, schedules are off, and the next thing I know, it's been two months since I've been in. 

And the mirror shows it. 

If asked what my natural hair color is, I would always say blond.  It started as blond then moved to that "dish water" blond, or dirty blond.  My school pictures show the process.  Until at sixteen, my hair looks as if I was trying to impersonate Joan Jett.  On some level I was.  Since then, when people ask what my natural hair color is, I tell people that my hair is blond, but has gotten darker with age. 

No lying to myself about my hair color now.  It's grey.   Not the pretty, Betty White grey that looks great on a 90  year old woman.  No, the grey like a street rat, grey.  The grey that when you look at it looks, oily, stringy, witch-like.  The grey that reminds me of my grandmother when she hadn't washed her beehive hair for a month. 

I need my mother's little helper and fast.  As God is my witness, may I never miss a hair color appointment again!