As I made my way home from a haircut in historic Valley Junction, navigating a double left hand turn lane with no stripes, I remembered the dusty gravel road that connected the farm I grew up on to the rest of the world. The nearest town, Melbourne, had a single hair salon that you entered by going to the backdoor of the beautician’s home. Not that I was customer. It was easy enough for mom to pull my hair back into a ponytail and make spit curls. Then every few months she would apply a box of smelly home permanent to my hair to give me volume and curls.
Arriving home, I stowed my purse in the closet and thought how much my hair salon had changed. The artistic woman who opened the shop and styled my hair now sits in a chair to cut her clients’ hair and only works fifteen hours a week. Sipping her pumpkin smoothie, she told me “My body doesn’t approve of even that.”
Now it’s her daughter who styles my hair, and she recently told me my hair is thinning and how there are new hair-growth-stimulating shampoos. She didn’t mention that using them would require a shower timer and a substantial allotment of time.
Meanwhile, my new stylist’s daughter is carving out her own place in the business by becoming an expert on wigs. Maybe she doesn’t believe in the shampoos her mom touts? I remember her when she was a giggly girl looking adoringly at her grandmother styling hair.
Every time I venture out of my home in suburban Urbandale, I see evidence of change. I haven’t moved since 2009. My neighbors and I deal with the streets in our neighborhood deteriorating. Once on the main streets, construction barrels and barricades make driving challenging. I can’t commute to my hairdressers the way I prefer, the most convenient safest way, the way I got there for years, because there is a bridge out. It’s been out for months but it won’t be out forever.
It occurs to me that this is what Buddhists call impermanence. Subtle, and not so subtle, changes that happen all the time. Hair thinning. Children growing up. Wigs. Material things deteriorating.
A simple trip to the hair salon has turned my day into an exercise in observing how life changes.
What changes do you note as your venture into the world?
IMAGE: My desk happens to be messy most the time but not all.
