5/1/25

And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.

For about 20 years now, I’ve been an unnatural redhead. From the common descriptions you read of redheads, they were everything I wanted to be. Confident. Assertive. Strong. Some would say stubborn. Others would say bullheaded.

I had the bullheaded part down pat. The others, I strived for.

As a child, my hair was stuck in the middle of a battle between my parents. My father loved long hair, and he wanted my hair long. My mother, who noticeably wore her hair short, wanted my hair short. During the cold weather months, my hair was allowed to grow, as my father made the argument that this would keep my neck and ears warm. My mother also couldn’t drive by choice, and didn’t drive until I was well into high school. During the warmer months, she could walk me to a local hair shop, sometimes a salon, sometimes a barber shop, and have my hair cut into what she called a pixie…really, really short. We would go during the day, when my father was at work.

I cried the whole day, because I knew what this meant, other than the fact my hair was going to be short again. I was going to have to go through days where my father would only refer to me as “son” and “little boy.”

I don’t know why, but when I entered middle school, my mother gave up the battle. Maybe this was because the popular style was long hair, parted down the middle, which was exactly how I wore it. By the time I hit senior year, my hair went down to the backs of my knees.

And I decided I hated it. It took forever to dry. It tangled easily. And maybe, just maybe, I decided I didn’t want to be like everyone else.

A few days before graduation, I brushed my long hair for the last time. Then I went to a salon and had three feet of hair cut off. It was the era of “feathering”, and the woman who cut my hair feathered me all over the place, while trying to teach me how to do it myself.

It was then I discovered how much only seeing out of one eye at a time affected my close depth perception. I could not tell when the curling iron was getting close to my forehead. Several scalding, tearful events later, I gave up and just wore my newly short hair straight down. By the end of college, I’d discovered the perm, and grew my hair out to shoulder-length again.

But as much as I admired redheads, I didn’t color my hair. I was a brunette. My hair matched my eyes. I was okay with that.

Until 2005. Lots of changes then. I was on my second marriage. I had four kids, three from my first marriage, and one from my second. I’d been to grad school, the first in my immediate family to earn an advanced degree. I was becoming known as a writer, particularly in the short story. I was teaching, and had just opened a creative writing studio, a business I was told would be impossible.

I was growing in confidence. Assertiveness. Strength. And I was putting my bullheadedness to good use. Just like a redhead.

I had a hairstylist by then named John. I was back to wearing my hair short, and whenever I went in for a haircut, before he’d let me go, he’d take gel and style my hair in punk, little spikes all over my head. I would laugh, go home, wash my hair, and smooth it back down.

Until I didn’t. I told John not only to punk it, but to make it red. We studied these little bits of colored hair stapled to a placard, and we both chose the same shade.

Oh, terrified.

But I will never forget picking up almost six-year old Olivia from summer school that day. The kids were playing on the playground when I walked across it. The teachers’ jaws dropped. Then they circled around me in what took me a while to recognize as a circle of admiration. Then Olivia ran up to me.

“Mama, is that you????” she shrieked. And she proclaimed me beautiful.

Thus began 20 years of punky red hair. It became a part of my “brand”. One time, when I was walking back to the condo in the middle of a snowstorm, after I parked my car in the parking garage across the street, a car skidded to a stop beside me. A woman opened the driver’s side door and stepped out.

“Excuse me,” she yelled through the wind. “Where do you get your hair done? I love it!”

I laughed. “Foxies,” I said, “on Wisconsin Avenue. Ask for John.”

“I’m going there right now!” She got back in her car and slid and skidded away.

John told me later she indeed went there right now. He gave her the punk style, but her red was a little bit different. “Because yours is you,” he said.

John died several years later. I now see Michelle, who has been keeping me red and short and spiky.

But lately, maybe because Michael died, maybe because I am now alone, just Kathie, not KathieandMichael, I’ve found myself wondering if I’m still me under my hair. Partly, it came from asking Michelle if my hair had gone gray at all, one day when I was there for my usual cut and color. “Well, I can’t tell now,” she said.

Can’t tell now. Who I am, under the color.

The thing is, I think I am who I am, confident, assertive, strong – also imaginative, creative, talented, and a few other things – because it’s just me. I’d be me if I was bald. Which may be why I’ve considered lately having my head shaved into a teeny tiny buzz cut. Though I haven’t. Yet.

But I did go in to see Michelle and told her to hold the color. Still keep it short, and I’m still gelling it. But no red.

And there was my hair, for the most part. Some of the red remains on the tips at the top. It’ll be gone with the next cut. But I’m a brunette again. My hair matches my eyes. My eyes, which used to always be studying the floor, but now look straight ahead at whatever’s there.

There is gray, at the temples and some on the sides. But I’ve found I don’t mind that. That’s a part of who I am too. I’m going to be sixty-five soon. I just signed up for Medicare.

I don’t know if anyone will be stopping a car for me soon, in the middle of a snowstorm, shouting exclamations of loving my hair. I’m pretty sure my daughter still thinks of me as beautiful, and she knows exactly who I am.

So do I. And I’m good with that.

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.