Moonlore - Publisher's Essay

Mother Nature Laughing Amidst My Tresses

"It was brown with a golden gloss, Janette, It was finer than silk of the floss, my pet; 'Twas a beautiful mist falling down to your wrist, 'Twas a thing to be braided, and jewelled, and kissed-- 'Twas the loveliest hair in the world, my pet.""
~ Author: Charles G. Halpine (used pseudonym Miles O'Reilly) Source: Janette's Hair
" Gray hair is God's graffiti"
~ Bill Cosby

I've aged into a pinto. Or is it a roan? Yes, roan: mixed strands of various hair colors, some on the same hair shaft because of their length. I'm silver and gold. But then....there's that red patch that just won't fade. It's solid. A definite pinto spot.

Obviously the scientists are wrong. They claim my hairs fall out by the thousands, regrowing from scratch. If that were true, the ruby spot would be gone ages ago. It survives, even as the gold dies. It hangs there, just below the silver, staring back defiantly every time I look in the mirror. The sun, merry as she is, can't induce that fiery fragment to dissolve. The remaining walnut is not nearly so fussy. It disappears on cue. Always has. The sun kisses it and gold appears—surfer gold—the stuff legends are made of.

Nature blessed me with walnut-ready-to-be-gold as a child. She cursed me with hair shafts so straight even Mom's torture with reeking Toni perms failed. Hours of gagging stench produced vivacious curls ala Goldilocks for a couple of hours, only to have them droop into lethargic apathy.

Nature's curse lived on into my teens, filled with a massive amount of metal curlers excruciatingly affixed to my scalp with giant bobby pins, nights and days spent in torture for just a handful of exciting dates. After high school, I gave up. I let it flow, unrestrained, free; flying in the wind as my horse and I galloped across the fields; soaking in the tides while I swam; smelling of sunshine, horse sweat and sea salt at day's end.

Then it was discovered by the hippies. "How do you get it so straight?" they crooned, stroking my waist-length tresses with admiration. "Did you iron it?"

"No way," they'd cry, when I confessed the secret was a simple wash and dry. I was both proud to own hair so mystifying and disconcerted at the unbelieving glances they tossed my way.

Men loved it. Their caress went there first, often just to entice me into fondling in other places. But sometimes, every so often, that one genuine touch appeared, the one who treasured authentic gold, who wanted silky softness, who didn't mind straight defiance. Those men I loved as they loved me.

The hippies admiring strokes were replicated years later in the Caribbean, where bazaar women pleaded to braid it. They too crooned, this time with a wonderful Jamaican lilt. "It'll look wonderful, pretty lady, the only flaxen dreadlocks in the world." I knew that wasn't true. I'd seen "Ten." I also knew the tangle factor in undoing those tiny braids, a puzzle that would only unravel with scissors. Fun as it might have been, it never was. I went home without their handiwork, content in knowing my hair would still be long on the morrow.

But nature wasn't done with me. She brought wrinkles to my face, which prompted a call for less hair. "Women your age look better when your hair is short, framing your face and lifting it up." My face stayed saggy, with long locks pulling it down.

And now this. I could dye, of course. Or I can face the day as a pinto-roan, unafraid to let the world shake its collective head and laugh. I can pretend it's addled appreciation for a woman who won't give in to fad. I've decided upon the latter. At least for now. What the hell. I'm old enough to wear the clash of red and purple as the popular story exhorts us to do. I might as well wear walnut and crimson tresses along with my silver and gold.

By Loretta Kemsley
Publisher/President
Women Artists and Writers International
Writer, Editor and Editorial Coach

Loretta Kemsley's Personal Portfolio: Women's Writings
http://lores.lair.moondance.org/