Ghost Touch

Everyone recognizes sights or sounds that are familiar, that transport them back to another place and time. I didn't realize that the same could be true of touch -- until today.
Today I dressed in a knit pullover shirt that belonged to Grace. She put it in a pile of clothes to give away and that pile remained stacked in the hallway until one of the cats knocked it over. Then I spied the medium blue shirt and picked it up. Too short for Grace, who is half a foot taller than I am. I kept it for myself.
I slipped the shirt on this morning. It has four tiny buttons along the top and sleeves that stop just below the shoulders with knit ties.
All day today, I've felt the those ties brush on my upper arms and I've tossed my head to push back the ropy weight of my hair against my upper arms. But the feeling isn't my hair. It's the ties of the shirt.
My hair now falls in curls again, but they stop just below my shoulders. They don't stretch down to the middle of my arms like they once did, sometime maybe 8 years ago. My hair grew long, and I followed the Curly Girl advice and didn't wash it or comb out the curls. The curls fell like dreadlocks, but not locked in tight. When I ran, I'd reach behind my neck and secure the hair in a long braid. I still have a mark on my back, just above my running bra, where the pony tail holder rubbed a scar as it swung back and forth during my long runs.
Even as I conciously knew that the weight along my arms was the shirt rather than my hair, each time that I felt it, it took me back.

Youth and Beauty

Do you have a time when you thought you were at the height of your looks? You know, a time when you look at pictures and realize, "I looked good then. I don't look like that anymore."
I've been having a lot of conversations with people lately about the fact that I would not want to go back to my teen years, too much drama. I wouldn't want to go back to my twenties because I was too black and white like the woman I wrote about in the previous post. Most of my thirties were a blur because I had little children who sapped my memory cells. Right around 39 or 40 though, I think I hit the peak of my looks.
Of course, I'm making assumptions that things are not going to get better from here.
First of all, I loved my hair then. It was long and curly. One of my journalist friends described it as romance heroine hair. I think I had finally just given up on doing anything to it and now that I look back, I love the way it looked.
I've been straightening it for a couple of years now, so it gets cut shorter and shorter because straightening it dries out the ends. The hair dresser cuts off the dead ends and now my hair is barely to my shoulders when straightened. Try to picture how short that is when I let it curl.

Look at this man in the market. He is delighted with me. Okay, maybe he is delighted that I am buying some of his product, but I think that I had no idea how charming I was at the time. Can I go back there now and take advantage of the attention?
A careful reader of this blog might notice that all of these photos were taken in France. Maybe I am just connecting a wonderful memory with the photos and think that I look better then.
I was also in pretty great shape. I think this was the year after I ran the marathon. Earl and I biked around Provence.
I didn't mind bicycling around France in a pair of padded shorts and I had a wrap around skirt that I pulled over the shorts when we stopped for lunch.
Maybe the looks are not better or worse than they are now or than they were before. Maybe it all has to do with how I was feeling at the time. If so, this picture pretty much says it all:

How about you? Would you go back to a previous age? Would you go back to the way you looked a previous age?

Curly Girls Unite

On our run this morning, talk turned to hair, which is strange because currently, DreamGirl has no hair. She ran without a cap, her bald head still nubbly in spots as the chemotherapy continues to work its magic.
I thought I was being petty as I twisted my hair into a braid to control the frizz created by the humidity. I reminded myself even as I tucked the braid in a cap that DreamGirl will be starting from scratch when her hair starts to grow out, so I should quit complaining. I thought I might feel uncomfortable talking about hair problems with a bald woman, but I didn't.
I asked her how she could resist telling bald men that she likes their hairstyle. She just smiled.
Then she told me that her daughter is having hair issues. When she brushes it, it grows huge.
"Tell her not to brush it," I urged.
"She doesn't have curly hair," DreamGirl said.
"Trust me. If her hair is getting big and frizzy, she has curly hair if you just allow the curls to emerge."

This is still a novel idea to many people, but if you have curly hair, brushing is not the way to go. I should know.
For years I brushed my hair and dealt with weird bumps that I tried to smooth down. When I read the book Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey, I became a convert.
I know what you're all thinking. Isn't this the same woman who loves to straighten her hair? Yes, that's me. But in this humidity, there's no sense pretending I have straight hair. I have to let it curl and control the frizz the best I can.
I start in the shower. I don't use shampoo. I haven't for years. Curly hair has open follicles and shampoo is bad for it. Curly hair also doesn't get greasy.
So I rub my scalp and add conditioner. I spread the conditioner from my scalp to the ends, removing all the tangles with my fingers. It's important to remove the tangles because I don't brush it, remember.
In humidity like this, I also leave some of the conditioner in. It isn't leave-in conditioner, but I only rinse the top of my head and leave conditioner on the ends.
When I get out of the shower, I don't wrap my head in a towel. Instead, I use a towel to scrunch it and get out the excess water. Then I add a hair product. I use Aveda Confixer. Then I let my hair dry. That's it.
I'll pull down my bangs and try to dry them, but they usually curl up again.
I got to thinking about curls after I went through old pictures for Grace's photo album. I saw some pictures of myself that I loved. My hair was really long, down to my elbows, and dark. The curls had taken over in long rolls that looked almost Rastafarian. This was at the height of my Curly Girl phase.
Before I read Curly Girl, my hair looked wavy instead of curly. That's because I used a pick to comb it every day after my shower. Not combing or brushing it makes a huge difference -- and can even lead to the Rastafarian look.
That's why I told DreamGirl that her daughter should stop brushing her hair. The more we curly girls brush our hair, the more we'll resemble Rosanne Rosannadanna from Saturday Night Live.
I even have a favorite curl. No matter how many times I straighten my hair, once I let it curl again, a curl on the right side down below my ear always emerges. It falls in a perfect long loop. Why can't all of my hair do that? Then I would truly have Romance heroine hair.
My hair is much shorter now, which is a problem for curls. The shorter the hair, the less weight, which means it has a tendency to frizz up. I like the weight of long hair to help control the frizz.
That's where straightening my hair has foiled my plans again. The more I straighten it, the more I damage it and have to cut the ends, thus resulting in shorter and shorter hair.