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Speaking of things unpredictable, possibly for the first time I can remember—which is saying something, as my years have accrued—I got caught in a thunderstorm without an umbrella.
This reveals an aspect of my character I don’t enjoy thinking about, as I believe vanity is a slippery slope. But for the past quarter century at least, I’ve taken excessive precautions about protecting my hair, because I have a blowout once a week and, if I’m careful, it lasts from one salon visit to the next. Even when I travel, I find a place for a blowout, often adding a few grace notes to the score of my adventures abroad. (When I visit family in Japan, my weekly blowout is a highlight.)
But last week I emerged from the subway into a clot of steaming humanity waiting inside the station for a storm to let up. My weather app showed a generous pour continuing for an hour. Drunk with impatience, I decided to run for the bus stop less than half a block away.
“Ran” is a kind description of how I got there. I was wearing Tevas, which were indestructible enough—but with water sloshing around my ankles, unidentified and unappealing detritus freely flowing through it, and my anxiety about slipping, I arrived at the bus stop drenched. I looked and felt as though I had emerged fully clothed from a shower. My hair clung to my head, dripping water into my eyes.
Reader, I liked it. The bus never came, so I walked home in a diminishing but still soaking rain. When I got to my apartment and slipped out of my sopping shift and into a dry one, I felt the kind of comfort available only after a test of endurance (however minor).
But my hair, my hair! I rough-dried it, without attention to style. And this is what I got (below). Freedom (albeit somewhat ambivalent) from the schedule to which I’ve tied myself for years.
This is all to say that in these times as we’re pushed—or shoved—out of our comfort zones into what often feels like a frightening new geography, we might find an enlarged perspective in how we choose to cope. Never before called a senator? Haven’t recently volunteered? Can’t remember the last time you went to a town hall? There are all kinds of liberation days.
After the paywall, a reader wants to know what to do about weird little brown rough patches showing up under her bosom. Turns out, they’re very predictable.
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