I’m here with Mom and Sis at Wacky Aunt Shirlee’s in Tempe, AZ. We’re gathering tomorrow to honor her life. And being together, we automatically jump right on one another’s nerves.
Remember the Look of Death? Well, now Mom is grieving, so she’s even more sensitive than usual. Which means she’s bringing up past sins, omissions and forgotten chores. Mine, not hers.
So I need a shower before the service.
At the moment, it’s my hair she’s fired up about, specifically about the approximately eighty-seven pounds of it that are still clogging her shower drain at home. “I’ve been picking up your hair since you left home 30 years ago, “Mom grouses. “In fact, I’m still dredging up hair: off the floor, in the carpet, out of the bathtub drain.”
While it’s true that in my youth my hair was so long that I could sit on it, I haven’t worn it past my shoulders in years. “And the last time I showered at your house was 1975,” I retort.
Mom smiles. “Precisely my point.”
My grandma thought my long dark locks gave me headaches. Dad insisted I’d never amount to anything unless I immediately cut my hippie do. Mom just seemed to buy a lot of Liquid Plumber.
I might not have thought much of Mom’s complaint, but the universe has ways of getting even. In addition to a daughter who as a long-tressed teen took after my sis with marathon showers, I have a son who grew dreadlocks for a while. So while neither ever was actually able to sit on their hair, the dreadlocks had a mind of their own (I swear I saw them moving once) and soon my bathtub drain was clogged worse than a rush-hour LA freeway. My bad hair karma had come back to haunt me
I wrap myself in a towel and head off to the shower.
“Here,” Mom says sweetly as she hands me a plunger. “You might need this.”