So, for the past twenty seven years, I have been doing what I do for a living. I am a hairdresser. I am in the business of making people feel better about themselves. I am in the business of making people feel special. I am in the business of listening.
I have been listening to my clients for a long, long time. I am rarely surprised when I hear some of their stories. Some of my clients I have known for fifteen years, twenty years, two years. Some were children when they started coming to me and now have their own children. I have witnessed women and men going through divorces, coming out, getting fired, getting married, getting Chemo, getting pregnant.
Somehow, you manage to enter these people's lives and become part of all their major events. My boss wrote an essay about this exact thing that was published in a magazine. As hairdressers, we see it all. The good, the bad, and the ugly. We are in all the photos and videos. We are there for all the memories. And through it all we try to make it all seem prettier than it really is.
I cannot tell you how many women have sat in my chair and complained about their hair and then said something like "I know it sounds silly to think about how I look when my mother is dying..." or something like that. She feels undeserving or guilty. How you look is 80% of how you feel.
I have had women tell me of their miscarriages as they were experiencing them. "At least my hair will be done when I go for my D and C."
I have seen women and men beat all kinds of odds and succeed at work or at school or at parenthood or landing a job.
Over the past few months I have watched some of these average people, mostly women, live their average lives in extraordinary ways. They have gone through losing a parent or both parents, losing babies, losing grandchildren, losing their homes, watching their parents deteriorate in health, getting diagnosed with cancer. Some of the things were minor; a hip or knee replacement here, a heart attack there.
Some things were even happy; a child graduated from college, grandchildren were born, houses were purchased, anniversaries and big birthdays were celebrated.
And, somehow, we have become integral parts of each other's lives. I am always with them in some way...I cut those bangs that are annoying the heck out of them; I put those highlights in that made their hair look so cool in that wedding photo; I did that up-do and glued on those lashes that made their daughter look so grown up at her sweet sixteen.
I pray for them, I laugh with them, I cry with them, I keep their secrets. It is a two-way street. They do the same for me. Not all my clients get to know me this intimately. But there are some very special people who have wiggled their way into my heart and gained my trust and we are there for each other.
It's kind of a strange relationship. It can seem a little one-sided as I tell it here. I don't just call them up out of the blue and ask how they are (although I may text one or two). They don't call me at home for appointments. But for that half hour or hour that we share, we are connected in away that most people don't get to connect. I don't just touch their lives, I physically touch them...that's very intimate...more intimate than a bartender or a therapist. So, quite often, they let me in.
I have been so blessed to be given this gift. This gift of a career that has put me in the path of so many inspiring girls and women and even a few guys. I try to remember every day to be grateful for all that I have been given and taught and shown.
I have been given the rarest of gifts...I have been able to see beauty at it's most raw and basic level...I see the light in the eyes of a bride on the day of her wedding and she doesn't even have a stitch of make-up on yet. I have seen the raw emotion of someone's tragedy and witnessed them find the strength and resolve to get through it. I have been witness to people surviving breast cancer and divorces and custody battles. I have seen the radiant glow as a mother-to-be drags her swollen feet and her swollen body in to get one last blow-out and pedicure before the baby comes. This, these peoples' lives, this is what is real and true. We live, we die, we get sick, we have good things happen, and we survive tragedies.
And we get our hair done, no matter what. Thank God.
