A Hairy Situation by Jana Richards

So, my province is back in lockdown. Bars and restaurants are closed except for take-out and delivery. Only essential stores, like grocery stores, hardware stores and pharmacies remain open, and then at only 25% capacity. In the last lockdown in the spring, liquor stores were deemed essential – I’ll have to check the rules to see if they’ve still got the green light. I’m pretty sure a lot people are feeling that a glass of wine is essential these days. I know I do.

There’s a long list of other closures and restrictions and recommendations. I’m not complaining. We need to flatten the curve and save lives. Healthcare is on the brink and we need to give doctors and nurses a chance to catch their breaths. This short, sharp lockdown was required to break the chain of transmission. 

But like the spring, the closing of my hair salon is going to bother me the most. I finally found a hairdresser who can wrangle my hair into submission and now I can’t see her. I know, I know. Getting a haircut is the least of my problems right now. But the struggle is real.

I wrote about my hair woes some time ago in Word Wranglers. I have very fine, very straight hair. Someone not familiar with cutting my type of hair can make a real mess of it, because every snip of the scissors shows up in my ultra-fine hair. More than once a hairdresser has been overzealous with the scissors leaving me with patches where my scalp shows. Or if they cut the hair on the crown of my head too short, it stands up like a rooster’s tail. Not good.

Over the last few years, I’ve embarked on an odyssey for “the one”, the hairdresser who could give me a cut I didn’t have to be embarrassed about. I asked friends and acquaintances for recommendations. I went through at least five different stylists but none of them panned out. While they were all lovely people and talented with other people’s hair, they couldn’t master my baby fine hair.

Like a scene from a good romance novel, I met Olive when I least expected it. On the morning of her wedding in September, my daughter arranged for a couple of hair stylists and a couple of makeup artists to meet us at a downtown hotel. We had a lot of fun getting ready. Olive did my hair, and though she didn’t cut it that day, she did a nice job. She told me she specialized in short hair cuts, so I figured I’d give her a chance. And I’m glad I did. It’s still early in our relationship, but I’m pretty sure she’s “the one”. 

At this point we’re not sure how long this lockdown will last. Until it’s over, Olive and I will be parted. Hopefully, we’ll be able have a pre-Christmas reunion. But by then I’ll be pretty shaggy.

What did/do you miss most in lockdown?