Through the Window

Through the Window

Except for one unfortunate and blessedly brief anomaly when I was about eight, I have had long hair all of my life.  Therefore I know the value of the six week trim and follow that schedule religiously.  Upon making my latest appointment, I put the phone back in my pocket and could almost swear I heard my Mother’s voice once again. 

“You’ve made an appointment at the salon”.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to get it styled this time?”

Sigh.

“Styled” was my Mother’s little euphemism - slightly snarky, but ever hopeful - for a haircut that would, finally, yank me from the brink of contumaciousness and plop me solidly down in the clover of risk-free respectability.  Really, who could blame her? When she was young hardly any woman over forty had long hair and, if they did, it usually came with some sort of iconoclastic t’shirt and often without the appropriate ladylike undergarments.  It is laughable to think of any of my schoolteachers with long and frequently windblown hair such as mine is now.  But then, I dare say few of us resemble our schoolteachers these days.

Don’t get me wrong, I know full well that I’m getting, ahem... older.  Everyone is, after all.  But I’m grateful that the oft unspoken, but still ironclad, rules that governed my Mother and her friends have for the most part been jettisoned along with eight-track tapes and girdles.  My sartorial choices have infinitely more to do with personal taste than any sort of age restriction and I never turn down any experience just because I think I’m too old.  Case in point... last week, upon returning to town from our little sabbatical whilst the floors of the cottage were being redone, I found myself barred from the bedroom because the hallway floors were not quite dry.  What to do?  The Songwriter took Edward and Apple out into the back garden to bunk down in the studio but somehow that just didn’t seem all that comfortable to me.  I was tired, I’d been driving for most of the day with two large dogs in the car and I knew my soft, lovely bed was just out of reach.  So, just as I would have done when I was sixteen... I carefully crawled inside the newly budded rose bush, jimmied a window and climbed up, up and in.  Never gave it a second thought.  Never once considered such an activity might be ill-advised till I told several people the next day who, upon hearing of my adventure, laughed just a little too loudly for my liking.  Let them laugh.  I slept soundly in my own bed and climbed out the window next morning fresh as a daisy.

(Of course the really funny aspect of this story happened following a midnight phone call from The Songwriter who informed me that Edward had no intention of sleeping away from me.  So... you guessed it, in a few moments I spied at my window the happy, grinning face of a big white furry dog, framed by pink rose buds, as Edward was hoisted up and into the very same portal I’d tumbled through earlier.  Edward, of course, acted as though this were an everyday occurrence, calmly hopping up on the bed, placing his head across my ankles as usual and falling immediately asleep.  Dogs keep us young as well, you know.) 

In speaking about her new book, Living the Good Long Life, the uber-active lifestyle doyenne, Martha Stewart, tells us that seventy is the new fifty.  Of course, she’s seventy-one, so she would say that, I suppose.  But I do appreciate her attitude and have no doubt she has some wisdom to impart in this latest publishing venture.  For myself, I never really thing about age.  When I do, it’s rather stunning to realize that it’s happening in spite of my long hair and climbing capabilities.  Ah well, I still left the salon yesterday without resorting to any sort of “style” and from her heavenly portal, I have no doubt my Mother was still shaking her head in frustration.

Maybe when I get to be Martha’s age, I’ll just wear it up.

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