Fear Of Dyeing Aging gracefully sometimes means hair politics have to take a back seat to vanity. and that Saturday I accompanied her to the beauty shop. Special to the Jewish News It was just as I'd dreaded: reeking of peroxide and hair spray, overcrowded y long dark hair has with 40- and 50-year-old women in always been my security smocks and curlers, gossiping and blanket, man-magnet, thumbing through fashion magazines. shield and political state- We made our way past 300-pound ment. It expresses me: unruly, tangled, Mrs. Kirby, who showed her stylist a hanging loose and free. magazine photo of Cher's new Once, when I put my hair up, every- Cleopatra coif and said, "It's me!" then one said I looked like my Grandmother navigated over to Robert, my mother's Sophie, my mother's mother. Sophie pony-tailed hairdresser. had hair the color of black bread, the She liked him because he had "magic exact shade of mine. She wore it up, hands." I liked him because he had hair braided elegantly on top of her head longer than mine and never tried to cut like a prize. off more than the usual inch from split Sophie died when my mother was 7. ends. She was a mystery to me, the woman A color consultant offered to bring whose face they say I stole from the out our "true selves, our essence" with a photograph that scared me as a child. free seasonal makeover. "Like a fine My mother has auburn hair, shiny as etching of dramatic contrast," Sheila flames. She wears it neat, short, swept told my mother, "you are autumn's har- up and feathered lightly over her brown vest and glowing warmth." Coral and eyes. She has it cut, tinted and touched honey peach would accentuate her up to preserve its natural shade. When I highlights. was 4, she initiated me, her only daugh- My mother bought honey-peach lip ter, into the Saturday beauty shop fini- gloss and matching eye shadow and al. asked if I wanted blush or foundation. I I remember mostly middle-aged wanted to go home. Severe gray and women being dyed, dipped, ironed and black were my hues, Sheila said. I was a clipped. They smelled bad and-looked woman of winter, like Sophie. even worse: tinfoil and white and black After college I moved to downtown goo lining their temples, space helmets Manhattan, where Sophie had given over their heads. I was put on a high birth to five children, my mother being spinning chair and watched the mirror the youngest. Amid the purple and blue in horror as my beloved long hair was stripes, short spikes and shaved heads, sheared into a pixie. My first-grade pic- my hair seemed rather tame. But not to ture shows a sad girl (with Sophie's dark my mother, who left a message on my side even then?) sporting a 1965 bob, phone machine one day. Robert was in one clump jutting out. I've had long New York! She'd arranged for him to straight hair since. stop by and give me a trim; she'd The first time I came home from already paid for it. college, my mother greeted me at the Though I protested at first, there door with, "You need a haircut." She was something to be said for having shook her head at my ragged ends and my hair done quickly at my apart- scraggly bangs, as if such disorder sym- bolized a rejection of her values. But my ment. Robert wound up stopping by, scissors in hand, once a month. He hair vanity overrode my hair politics, said he was visiting a friend in the city, but I imagined my mother had paid Susan Shapiro, the author of a poetry his fee to make sure my bangs stayed collection called "Internal Medicine," grew out of my eyes. up in West Bloomfield. This article origi- By my early 30s, I'd sprouted some nally appeared in the New York Times gray, and I liked it. I'd flaunt it. Who Magazine and is reprinted with the needed my mother's fake fountain of author's permission. SUSAN SHAPIRO M 7/17 1998 76 youth? That was for fancy suburban ladies. I'd grow old naturally in New York like Gloria Steinem. I'd wear a white streak in the middle of my head like Susan Sontag. My mother began dyeing her hair at 30. I'd never dye mine in a million years. • A few summers ago, I visited the Midwest after a melancholy season. I'd broken up with a man I loved because he was having an affair with a younger woman. To make matters worse, I'd had a cancer scare: precancerous cells in my cervix were lasered away quickly and completely. I tried to quit smoking. That meant I gained weight, along with a few lines under my eyes. Was it worry or sadness that had suddenly turned my hair color to salt and pepper? I stared in my pink-framed, full-length childhood mirror and it hit me for the first time: I was no longer young. The last day of vacation, my mother said, "You need a haircut." I said okay. "Do you want to get it colored?" she asked, slipping the last word in casually. I was shocked at how casually I com- plied, and at how excited I felt. Soon, I was waving to Mrs. Kahn, Mrs. Kirby and Sheila, as if they were long-lost friends. I flipped through Harper's Bazaar while my mother made a fuss over pictures of Mrs. Lee's grandchil- dren. My mother and I sat side by side in dark smocks, our foreheads sticky with foil and dye. She looked at me and said, "Sophie!" I traced Sophie's face in the mirror. I pictured her standing on the fire escape of her tenement at midnight, undoing her thick hair, raven strands blowing in the hot breeze. When it came time to say goodbye, I stared at my mother's luminous, feath- ered red hair and silky skin spotted with freckles; she looked like a little girl. She held me longer than usual. "The Goodman women are all too emotion- al," she said. I nodded, then left her, for Sophie's city and mine, with shiny hair darker than before, pretending nothing had changed. I was raven-haired and immortal again. At least until the roots grew in. imps Pickup Softball B'nai B'rith Leadership Network presents its second season of pickup softball. Schedule: July 26, Aug. 9, Aug. 23 at Pioneer Park All games begin at 11 a.m. Karen Safran, (248) 426- 9520. Saturday, July 18 Dinner and movie night with Jewish Professional Singles. David, (248) 398-9370. Sunday, July 19 Build a house, build a life. 8:30 a.m., Oak Park JCC. Help build/renovate a home with the Think Twice Foundation and Hillel of Metro Detroit. RSVP by July 13, (313) 577-3459. Thursday, July 23 Jewish Professional Singles coffee house. 7:30 p.m. At Java Masters, Farmington. David, (248) 398-9370. Saturday, July 25 Swing night cocktail party with Jewish Professional Singles. 8 p.m. Cost: $10. RSVP and directions, Michele, (248) 546- 4961. Sunday, July 26 Cedar Point trip with B'nai B'rith Leadership Network. Meet at B'riai B'rith office, 31600 W. 13 Mile Road, at 8:30 a.m. Cost: $27 members, $30 non- members. RSVP by July 23, Jeff and Deb Cymerint, (248) 478- 8338. Clarification A June 26 quote from Talya Drissman was incorrectly paired wit a photograph of Michelle Kaciancier.