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Julieta
Every six weeks, Ishow up at the salon for my regularly scheduled hair appointment. A trim, an upkeep. It’s a comforting routine. One that I can always count on, one that is safe and predictable.
“Hi Jenny.” I greet the girl at the front desk. “I have a ten o’clock with Cristina.”
She checks me in, but Cristina walks by, waving.
“Hey Julie. Go ahead and take a seat. I’ll be right there,” she says.
But when I comfortably walk through the salon I’ve been to a million times and sit down in the same salon chair—the fourth one in, the mirror decorated with colors as vibrant as her hair—I start to feel antsy.
I start to feel …uncomfortable.
All around me stylists are chatting freely with their clients who know the routine. This is a classic Saturday morning. The salon smells faintly like hair products and lotions. The blow dryer is always on somewhere, white noise that lingers in the background. I look at Cristina’s station, the combs she alwaysuses, the hair dryer set in its holder. The stylist cart, the clips. I feel a crippling desire to take those sharp scissors, shiny and glinting with the reflection of the lights, and chop all this hair off in an instant. To get up and run out of here.
So maybe the classes were a bad idea. I knew it from the beginning anyway. My job can’t handle my absence, and my family would ask too many questions about this and never let me live it down. I was worried and with good reason.
Doesn’t matter that I felt an inkling of something finally. Or that I spent an hour not worried about anybody or anything but myself. None of it matters when I’ve got responsibilities to tend to, other priorities to address.
Maybe that was too much too soon. Too impulsive, too rash. Maybe I should aim to make a different kind of change.
“Hey girl. How are you?” Cristina says just then, coming up behind my chair, probably saving me from myself. She grabs the apron and ties it around my neck, securing the clips at the back.
“Good, good.” I swallow.
She brushes my hair back; this routine is a familiar one with her, too. She knows what to do. She does the same damn thing every six weeks. But even then, every six weeks, she always checks.
“Just the trim, right?” She pumps the chair up with her foot, looking at my reflection in the mirror.
Maybe this time, I need to break the routine.
“I’m not sure.”
She pauses, hands on the back of the chair.
“I need a change, I think.”
“A change? What kind of change?” Her eyes widen. She’s excited now, chewing her gum with more vigor. She loves change in the form of a drastic haircut.
“I was thinking a cut.” I answer slowly, unsurely. I actually don’t know what I’m thinking cause I wasn’t thinking anything until about two minutes ago.
“Okay!” She bobs her head up and down and runs her manicured nails through my long hair. It’s down past my shoulder blades right now, a length that I usually tie back or up for work. Long hair that at times is more of an inconvenience than a pleasantry. “How short were you thinking then?”
Well. How shortwasI thinking? I look in the mirror, hair fanned around my shoulders hiding parts of my face. How long have I hidden myself? How long have I lived in the solace of a safe haircut? Of a safe life? Perhaps too long. So, I lift my hand up and point, channeling the strength I use in work. One clear cut decision, delivered with a confidence I certainly don’t feel but am trying my best to convey.
“Like … about here,” I say. And when she sees my hand pointing to right above my shoulders, signaling for a fresh cut bob, her face breaks out into the most excited grin like a kid on Christmas.
I take a deep breath as she begins. It’s just hair. This isn’t me getting up and moving to Alaska or something. This is just a haircut. If it’s terrible, it will just grow back. I could even have her put in extensions.
But no. I want this.
I want a change. I need a change.
I am so tired of this mundane, repetitive life. I am so tired of safe and simple and six-week maintenance appointments. I want the spontaneity that Agostina so proudly wears. I want the happy-go-lucky life that Delfina has created for herself. Even my younger brother who got the easygoing parents without any of the guilt trips to do well in school, go to college, make money. I want my own life to be one that I’m proud of, because I’m starting to realize how not proud of it I feel.
The snip of the scissors sounds harsh against my ears as the wet clumps of my hair slide down to the floor. Like something symbolic in the pieces that are falling around me.
This isn’t about the hair. I just think it was the easiest target. Maybe the one closest to me at the moment. So, this could be a start. Tango might have been the first step, but perhaps that was the misstep. This could be the do-over.
