Dear Reader,
She was a short woman, with a round face, her cheeks had a natural blush when she smiled, and a whitish tint covered her head--she was getting her hair colored--but it was her smile that first caught my attention.
I was fifteen minutes early and waiting for my hair appointment. I stopped and stared--I couldn't help myself. For a moment I could hardly breathe and I tried to hide my shaking hands. I thought it was her; she looked just like my mother, but my mother's been gone for years. My headset, where's my headset--I turned the music on louder and louder--thinking maybe I could transport myself somewhere else. It was all too much for me.
Every week I visit the hairdresser. I don't even own a bottle of shampoo, and my mother's to blame. Yes, my mother who washed out every container; "Throw nothing away, buy nothing unless it's on sale, buy the wrong size and make it fit if it's a good price." Oh, how many times did I hear those words? Yet Mom had a standing, weekly appointment at the hairdresser. In fact, I don't ever remember seeing my mother wash and dry her own hair.
When you live in a small town, like my mother did, the price of a weekly wash and blow dry and a monthly tint were somehow justifiable in her self-imposed budget. Maybe it was because she always worked a full-time job, or maybe my mother was like me--I just can't blow dry my hair into anything that looks respectable.
But the first year Mom came to winter in Florida, she gasped when I took her to the hair salon on my weekly visit. Thirty dollars for a wash and blow dry, $50 for a haircut, my mother was beside herself. But it was one of the few times in her life she decided to take a chance.
"Go ahead, cut my hair. Make me look beautiful...something different," she told my hairdresser. And that's exactly what my hairdresser produced--a different Mom stood before me. I barely recognized her. My mother became a different woman that day and she smiled that smile...
...it's the same smile I see across the room today. She looks like my mother. Oh how I wish she were my mother, even for a minute--just a hug and embrace to feel her arms around me again.
But all I could do was stare at the woman with the tint on her hair. I walked away from her view. Maybe I'm imagining things. But when I returned, she was still there, and so was that smile.
That smile from across the room meant just for me--a smile to keep in my heart.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
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