BIG, BIGGER, BIGGEST

Let’s put things in perspective. My disability income has not been cut. I found a temporary home to live in for the next six months. I have neither a cough nor a fever. I can still smell and taste my food. I’m not on a ventilator. I’m not even “suffering” from boredom. Advantage introvert.

So I’ve got it good.

If you’d like, this might be the time to stop reading and resume your online surfing. I’m sure Drs. Oz and Phil have more sage things to say about the pandemic. It’s time for me to whine. I’m bracing for your eye rolls. I’m trying to pretend I’m not on the precipice of an all-out hair crisis.

I’d thought I’d timed things perfectly, texting my hairstylist during the first week of March and ensuring she could fit me in for a cut, sideburn coloring and full highlights five days before my flight to Stockholm. It was the last possible day that would work, given that I had so many tasks and appointments related to my scheduled move-out from my condo. It had taken her three days to reply to my text, but we locked in the day and time and I felt confident I’d be well groomed, perhaps even blending in as a wannabe Swede.

You know what came next. I stayed in full denial about both the trip and the cut. They would happen. Wish for something bad enough and it comes true. Disney told me so.

Hmm, the prime minister’s hair is 

holding up particularly well...

But then Sweden closed its borders to foreigners and the next day my stylist texted to say she could no longer take appointments. It was for her safety, for our safety and, as if to make sure I’d suck it up and show both dignity and awareness for others, she added that she was in daily contact with elderly family members and relatives with compromised immunity. Secretly, I thought the canceled haircut was a brilliant, if mean-spirited, maneuver by our prime minister to ensure that I would stay at home.

Well played, Mr. Trudeau. Well played.

When pushed and prodded enough, we all can come up with something as our best physical asset. Maybe it’s piercing blue eyes or toothpaste commercial-worthy teeth or bulging biceps or a bubble butt. For me, perhaps by default, it’s hair.

It wasn’t always so. As a kid growing up in the ’70s, I was regularly ridiculed for being the only kid in class with a head of unruly red curls. Living far from the Emerald Isle, red was considered freakish and plain ugly. Fonzie wooed the girls, not Richie Cunningham. I got called Carrot Top, Raggedy Andy and, yes, Raggedy Ann. Mild putdowns but devastating for a shy, overly sensitive kid with a propensity for staring at his shoelaces and saving his best conversations for imaginary friends.

I grew into my hair. In my twenties, people—always women—started to almost sound envious about the shade, a sun-kissed strawberry blond in summer, a deeper auburn in winter. They even liked the thickness and the twisty, willful curls. It was the ’80s, after all, the era of big, big hair.

Alas, the ’80s are long behind us but my big, big hair is back. I’m doing what I can to cope, adding extra gel as a feeble effort to tame the beast and playing with the part every day as if something slightly off-center will make the waves less than tsunami-sized. I take comfort knowing I’m not going through hair anxiety alone. I see the distressed tweets on a daily basis. I’ve seen the selfies documenting drastic action, men shaving themselves down to a stubbled noggin. Two weeks ago, my boyfriend (yes, it’s reached the point where I’m calling Daniel that) texted me to tell me he’d taken a shaver to his already short gray hairdo. “Photo, please,” I replied. I needed to prepare in order to conceal a possible look of shock. Fortunately, he looked as handsome as ever.

To be sure, I won’t be shaving my head. When I was about twelve or thirteen—such a vulnerable age—, my paternal grandmother looked at me and said, “I see you got my moles.” I know there’s a whole field of them under all my hair. A few years ago, one of them blew up to the size of a cyst and I had it cut out after a six year old quite delicately informed me that I had a wad of bubble gum stuck in my hair. If only. Over the years, hairstylists have nicked many a mole. What lies beneath ain’t pretty.

About four times a week Daniel offers to cut my hair. It’s clear evidence I whine too much. I really must stop claiming that hair cutting should be an essential service. I politely decline the offer or artfully dodge the subject, craning my neck and pointing out a social distance violator on one of our many walks. (That always gets him.) For a moment this week, I almost empathized with the red-capped protesters in Michigan, wanting to reopen businesses so they could feast on endless breadsticks at Olive Garden once again. I’ve also dreamed too often about a black market for barbers cropping up.

The reveal: morning bedhead

I’m sane enough to know ordering barbers back to work won’t bring the immediate relief I need. Toilet paper plundering will pale in comparison to the riots that will break out during the quest for hair redemption. People will rush to make appointments with far quicker texting thumbs. I’ll be left staring longingly into salons, watching other luckier souls sitting and sipping their newly appreciated Starbucks frappuccinos as their tresses are tamed.

Relief for me is many weeks away, perhaps even longer. I’ve started studying the looks of Marge Simpson and ’80s New Wave bands. I fear that in a moment of styling defeat, I may surrender to split ends and asymmetry, letting Daniel hack away with a dull pair of kitchen scissors. It seems too early to put our relationship to such a test. But these are indeed dire times.

I close with another reality check. Yes, yes, I’m in good health. That’s the main thing. Now that grocery stores aren’t letting me bring in my canvas bags, I can always pass the idle time turning my growing supply of paper bags into an art project. 2020 will go down as an anomaly in the fashion annals anyway. Keep coping, people. We shall survive this, even if things have to get a little uglier.