Hair

The day my grandson Doug was to come from Chicago for a visit, I looked in the mirror and said to myself, “What a mess!” Why didn’t I manage to get a haircut? I should have had my long, scraggly mane cut a month ago.

I drove the 635 expressway at 8 o’clock in the morning, proud of myself as an 81-year-old woman negotiating rush-hour traffic, braking to quick stops and then speeding up to 70 mph to keep up. I did it as confidently as if I’d been in a NASCAR on the Texas Motor Speedway.

At DFW Airport, Doug waited at the curb outside baggage claim. My tall (6'2"), handsome grandson’s hair was as disorderly as mine, standing up in brown waves all around his head and hanging in his eyes.

I promised myself we’d get haircuts before I sent him back to Chicago. But two days later we went back to the airport to meet my son David, flying in from California. From the moment they fastened their seatbelts, uncle and nephew were talking computer. They could have been speaking Chinese for all I understood. They were so involved in talking to each other, I could have been on the moon.

That’s how it went the whole weekend. They had to go to the electronics store to buy cables to attach Doug’s laptop to my television to watch a movie. I had to go to dialysis. David had to leave on Monday. I had to go to dialysis again the next day.

The last day of Doug’s visit he wanted to go to the National Boy Scout Museum. Since the museum is in Irving, next to the airport, we started out at noon. On the way we stopped to get Doug a Whataburger. They don’t have that chain in Illinois, and Doug wanted to try one of those big hamburgers.

The museum has a long gallery filled with paintings Norman Rockwell did especially for the Boy Scouts. I enjoyed those, but for me an unexpected delight was pages from Baden-Powell’s journals. Exquisite watercolors! The founder of the Scouts traveled in North Africa and India and elsewhere, with a keen eye and genuine talent. Also humor. In St. Peter’s in Rome, he painted a profile of the famous statue of the saint with a small girl bending over to lift her sister up to kiss the bronze toe, traditionally meant to confer good luck.

An hour and a half at the museum was all Doug needed. We had two more hours before Doug had to be at the airport.

I asked Doug, “What's the terminal and gate for your plane?”

“I don’t know.”

He pulled off MacArthur Blvd. into the parking lot of a strip mall. He left the car running for the air-conditioner (it was 95 degrees outside) as he got out his blackberry and started punching buttons. I looked up. We were parked in front of a shop with a big sign that said, “Haircuts. No appointment necessary.”

“Turn off the engine,” I said. “We’re going to get our hair cut.”

Thirty minutes later a tiny Vietnamese lady was sweeping up piles of hair, Doug’s brown and my gray.

That’s the story of my life. It happened many times. Just when I think the situation is all bogged down, something turns it around.

I sent my grandson home to his mother looking trim and handsome. And I came home to my retirement community looking better than I had in months.