Bad Hair Day

Admittedly, my haircut and color are easily four months past their "use-by" date. Even when it was at its best, my hair took on other people's personalities and appearances while I was sleeping.

It's an odd bit of family history that, after 15 generations on both sides (even, more amazingly, in my DH's family too) in what is now the United States, absolutely everyone in the line having come from England since the Norman invasion (and we know who they were because we have the documentation), the one darn rogue Irishman who slipped in somewhere along the line often expresses himself in my hair. I can look at pictures of daddy and my ginger grandpa and his 13 siblings and his pioneer mother, Granny, and see the same stubborn waves in exactly the same stubborn places. It's weird, as if I'm not myself--I'm THEM. There's a peculiar huge, unconquerable wave on one side in front. Nothing squelches it.

Even with a new cut, I wake up and look in the mirror before brushing my hair to see who I am starting out as today. Frequently it's John F. Kennedy. Other days it's Conan O'Brien. (See? The Irish never die.) But in response to the Kennedys and O'Briens, it's not Irish but Anglo-American eyes that are smiling.

I'm not at all horrified when I skip countries and go to Scotland, and I see Rod Stewart in the mirror. I could so use that energy! And wish I could play soccer. And some mornings I go home to England and am just plain Mick Jagger. Not bad! Goes well with my wrinkles and smile, but alas, not my bank account. I'm pretty sure I couldn't handle the touring, even at my not-so-alarming age, either.

Well, now it's grown out. I've had some surprises as it extended itself. An amusing one was Helena Bonham Carter in Sweeney Todd.

But my very somnolent Academy Award best was this morning--I loved it so much I went around for hours without brushing my hair--Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?!