I think I will eventually end up living in one of the cities I have already lived in: Manhattan, Washington D.C. or Boston, or back in Newport, R.I. where I grew up, or even Paris. And while I feel completely at home in those cities, there is a more important reason to move to one of them.
My hair loves living there. (Being of Irish decent, my skin also loves those cities.)
And when my hair is happy, I’m happy too because when my hair is happy, it is soft and bouncy and wavy, curly, flow-y. It’s the humidity and the moisture in the air that causes it to be so. Irish people just aren’t meant to live in dry, desert-infused locales. In these arid climates, our hair and our skin cry out for help, but, alas, no tears can accompany our pain. They have all been dispatched in a vain attempt to resuscitate dust-filled epidermal pores and parched hair follicles. It is a known scientific fact; genetically, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, we Irish require that hint of moisture in the air to be fully who we are from the inside out.
But in an effort to be completely transparent about my reason to move back to high humidity, sudden downpours, and thunderstorms; it makes my Irish skin happy, yes, of course, but, frankly…
it’s all about my happy, soft, bouncy, loosely curled red hair.
That being said, this next amazing disclosure may shock you. Even though I grew up in a moist climate, I hated my happy, soft, bouncy, loosely curled red hair. People called me “Red” (I have a name, please use it!), “Ginger” (ugh!), and “Carrot Top” (seriously my hair is RED not orange!), I felt like an oddball, a freak of nature, something to dip into blue cheese dressing.
I even dyed my hair blonde (ish) for years.
It was not until much later (okay, like 15 years ago) that I really started to embrace my happy, soft, bouncy, loosely curled red hair. And, guess what? Slowly, over the past 15 years, red hair has become all the rage! Have you noticed that a disproportionate number of women, all of a sudden, have red hair? I remember house hunting ten years ago, and a realtor said to me very enthusiastically, “My goodness! You are the FOURTH redhead I have had in here today!” To which I smugly replied, “Yes, but I bet I’m the first natural one.” Seriously! People started to notice my red hair with awe and admiration! Even the midwife at my first appointment during pregnancy with my son exclaimed with joy, “Well, you really ARE a redhead!” (Yes, the curtains match the drapes. Thank you very much.)
In my previous blog, www.theyearoftheboy.blogspot.com, I talked about my happy, soft, bouncy, loosely curled red hair…a lot. It is the one of a couple of physical characteristics that I now enjoy having the most. I don’t understand how you blondes or brunettes experience life because I am not a member of your clan, but I can report from a redheaded point of view that there exists a secret society of men who devote themselves to redheaded women (I call them the Redheaders). I have noticed that for them, it doesn’t really matter how old the woman is or what her body size and shape is, as long as she has red hair; she has their attention. I used to distain those men for their single-mindedness, but now I revel in it.
You want to smile at me? Open the door for me? Get a can of Campbell’s Cream of Broccoli off the top shelf at the supermarket for me? Go for it! I am all about being served.
At the ripe young age of 59, after coming of age during the Women’s Movement, working tirelessly at asserting my independence, and brazenly displaying my obviously enviable super-human and Benihana-like precision and skill around self-care, I am finally all about getting some attention for my happy, soft, bouncy, loosely curled red hair.
So I am sure you can imagine my horror and dismay last June when I and my climate-induced happy, soft, bouncy, loosely curled red hair spent some time in Paris with a very close female friend. We (my red head and I) went into the trip with our cornflower blues eyes wide open. We knew we were in the (friendly) competition of a lifetime. You see, my friend is a STUNNING piece of God’s workmanship and, Honey, she can teach all of us a thing or two about putting ourselves together head-to-toe (and back again). So, here’s the advice we would have given you back in June about going anywhere fashionable with a woman like that…
Stay home.
It was quite a blow to traverse the streets of Paris with her and notice all eyes on her deck. The lack of attention was embarrassing. Hellooooo? Happy, soft, bouncy, loosely curled redhead dans la maison!
Okay, honestly, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her either, so really what else could I expect?
I returned from Paris a sadder but wiser girl, however, more importantly, I got it. It’s not about who embraces my amazing happy, soft, bouncy, loosely curled red hair. It is about how much I can allow myself to own, and brazenly display my love of my Self, my happy, soft, bouncy, loosely curled red hair, my Irish skin, and my cornflower blue eyes…all of me fresh and dewy from the inside out.
BTW, my friend and I are planning another trip to an, as yet undetermined, but amazing and fashionable locale.
As a final note, I still want to move to a more genetically agreeable climate, but as I am writing this, the most astonishing thing just occurred. Those of us in southern California are experiencing, at this very moment, a bit of the miraculous in the form of the extremely rare (and to my redhead) extremely welcome California thunderstorm.
I am going to interpret that as an invitation from California to please stick around for a while.
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