Another Goodbye

She did it.  After years of cutting, curling and coloring at Headlines, Melissa Quandt (the Evil Twin as I like to refer to her), took the sign down and walked away last night.  She takes her clients with her to a new salon in Wichita, one that’s closer to her new lovely home and right on the way from her house to Starbucks, so the commute will be, let’s call it PERFECT.

When I started My New Life, Melissa was there, so I was pretty much expecting to be the one that would be there for her.  I was and you know what she did??  The little hussy made me clean out the crappy color cabinet.    Actually,

it’s a huge compliment.  You only allow those you love the most to help you with the crap you hate the most.  So I bitched about it, then grinned because I knew she couldn’t live without me, or better yet….wouldn’t want to.

As for her New Life, I’m not sure any of us get why she was crying cleaning out her shampoo bowl, she is after all, still a hairdresser.  All her customers are following her to Salon Images (over there near 21st & Tyler by Emperor’s Grill-which has awesome fried rice!) and she will stay in touch with the girls she worked with at Headlines, I can hear  ”I have lunch today with Shelly ” already in my head!   So telling her that she should be happy to have a change of scenery seemed almost unnecessary, but it was.  Her heart was broken, just like any of ours would when you walk away from a life you know, to one that at this point, ,only seems good on paper.

Most of Melissa’s clients will show up on Thursday and comment on the new place, the new location, the new stuff and most will really like it.  I know I can’t wait to be the first one in for a color job (even though it’s merely for accent, I wanted the place of honor, I am so a TV Diva, amazing I didn’t make it in the business past the 20 year mark!)  What we won’t see or remember is all the years it took to get her to this new place.  She once owned Headlines (she hated that part of the business), she has had clients who’ve married, divorced, moved, and God Bless Them, passed away, yet she was always there, ready to make them beautiful and listen to all those stories.     For most of us, it’s just a new setting, for Melissa, it’s “Her New Life” just beginning.  Congratulations Melissa, if I’ve learned anything while I was starting over….it’s just that sometimes we stay too long. A wise woman once said (in a teaser for her new TV project, “Sometimes change is GOOD.”    An even wiser one (which means not ME) said, “Often the only thing standing in the way of a great life, is a good one.”  Well, DUDES, get of our way, we’re on the fast track to Heaven on earth, but I promise, we’ll make plenty of pit stops at Starbucks along the way.

I Want SHORT Hair

I think every woman has a story of when they decided they wanted SHORT hair, only to cut it off and feel like the only way they would have said that was if they were on illegal drugs or had a gun held to their head.  Several years ago, I discovered something even worse.  That’s when your four year old daughter says she wants SHORT hair, and afterwards, didn’t mean THAT short.

Tanza was in preschool the first time it happened to one of my offspring.  Let’s just say, I took her shopping afterward, and she hid behind my legs because she didn’t want to see herself in the mirrors that when you get your hair cut seem to be EVERYWHERE.  When my husband came home that night to see the new do, Tanza was hiding behind the chair.

Fast forward five years later, for her 9th birthday, I let her get blonde highlights and a new do, because after all my BFF is a hairdresser, and the price was right.  I have to say, I knew we were in good hands, but I was still so  scared, much more than Tanza was,  scared that baby girl of mine might cower in the corner, and that it would have been me that failed her once again.

I know there are worse things in life that you can do to your child, but the fact that I didn’t protect her from that first shocking cut was my real introduction to motherhood.  One that I will carry with me always, so the fact that Tanza wheeled around in that chair today, and said, I LOVE IT somehow made me feel like my Mom card wasn’t going to be revoked.  Granted it should have been five years ago, but this time, we did okay, and Tanza you look MAHHHHVELOUS.   That’s what I really wanted to say!

 

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