May 22, 2020
Review, Edit and Update:
This Episode addresses an early Covid19 pandemic concern: the length and colour of our hair. The fixes to this episode are not as dramatic as fixes to hair soon to be falling on salon floors. Just boring things like cleaned up sentence structure, removal of unnecessary punctuation and repair of a couple of typos.
Lost and Found
“Dez, what are these scissors for?” Emmie had been in the bathroom and had just washed her hands. While she was drying them, she checked in the mirror for any stray chin hairs. She spied one making its appearance at her jawline, just to the left of her chin. At least it’s not white. Daily she checked not just for stray hairs, but whether they were white or not. Looking for tweezers, she opened the medicine cabinet. No tweezers, but a pair of scissors winked at her. They looked awfully familiar but she knew she didn’t have any scissors like that. I should probably have asked before I went poking in Dez's medicine chest for a pair of tweezers. Emelina had let some of her manners slip in the last couple of weeks. She felt relaxed and really quite content. Picking up the scissors, she ruthlessly clipped off the offending hair.
“What, Emmie? Scissors? Oh, those are mine from when I went to hair school. I thought I’d like being a hairdresser, but I decided it wasn’t for me. By that time I had a whole set of scissors and I think there’s an apron around here somewhere. The rest of the set are scattered around everywhere. I'm not sure I even have a whole set anymore. I used to have a clipper but my last boyfriend took it with him. He liked to shave his head with it. Why?”
“Oh, I was just wondering. They look familiar to me, but - oh, I know. Henrí has scissors like this. He uses them when he is styling my hair.”
“Who’s Henrí?” Dez rolled her eyes while attempting a French accent. “One of your many peeps?”
“No, Henrí is not ‘one of my peeps? He is my hairstylist and has private clients. I am one of them and it’s getting past time to see him. Dez, can I access my email from your computer? I’d like to contact him and see if he can come out to my estate. I need my hair trimmed and really need colour and highlights before I start looking ancient.”
“Oh, please Emmie, the whole female population, especially any one of us over forty, is going to be showing their true colours. And besides, this social distancing thing means hairstylists too.”
Dez, came out of her kitchen/dining room. Wearing a well worn apron, once white, now multicoloured, she had been painting. The partially finished canvas was a whimsical depiction of the block of stores, bank, shops in the neighbourhood commercial area they had browsed through the day before.
“You did that? I knew you painted when you were in highschool but I didn’t know you still did. You’re pretty good.”
“I started this painting a long time ago and it was shoved to the back of my closet. All my paints and brushes were stuffed in a box. It was up on the shelf and the easel was behind my dresser. No room in the closet. You were reading. I was bored. Thought it was a good time to get it all out and see if I still knew how to wield a brush. I’ve painted over some of it, and fixed some things, added some things. Anyway, what’s wrong with your hair? It looks ok to me.”
“I don’t want it to look just ‘ok’. I want it to feel right too. Right now it feels shaggy and too long. I am getting rather frustrated with this whole situation.”
“Let me look at your hair and see what I can do. Don’t look horrified, I’m not going to use the scissors on you…..yet.” Dez grinned when her sister drew back from her as though she was about to have her hair chopped off. “Didn’t you ask me about email on my computer? If you won’t let me give your hair a trim, I can at least give you a computer lesson about email. Just as long as you’re not setting up an appointment with Henrí. That is a definite no no. We’re still supposed to be ‘putting our foot on the gas’ according to the health head honchos on CBC this afternoon.”
Dez sat Emmie down at her old roll-top desk that only accommodated a laptop. Dez already had the laptop open, with an internet program page opened. Who’s your server - google, msn, …….?”
Once Dez had walked Emmie through how to use another computer for her email, she left her alone with her 200 emails. “Wow! You’ve got a lot of emails to get through.”
“I didn’t catch up on them very often while we were out at my place, so I guess I’ll go through them here. I want to catch up with the different boards I’m on. See if they are still operating! Find out how everyone is.”
“Just how many boards are you on?”
“Actually only three and one of them only meets once a year. I’ve been feeling quite useless when I’m at the meetings. It’s finances or fundraising and I’m not good with either. I think my heart has gone out of charity work ~ oh, that sounds so dreadful ~ but I still need to touch base with them. As long as I’m on these boards, I need to see whether I want to continue or not. So much has changed in the past month, that I’m thinking I need to change a lot of things in my own life.”
“Just don’t change too many things too fast, big sister. Then you’ll really be in a pickle.” As Dez was talking, she was gently lifting up and combing her fingers through the back of Emmie’s hair.
"It really does look like there could be some trimming done.”
Emelina spun around “Don’t you dare pick up those scissors.”
“I won’t." Dez dropped her sisters hair, held her hands up and stepped back quickly. "I just wanted to see if I remembered what it felt like to analyze someone’s hair.” Actually Dez really did want to trim Emmie’s hair. The business of being a hairdresser definitely hadn’t appealed to her messy, free spirited personality. Working with the someone’s hair was another story altogether. “If you change your mind, just let me know. I’m pretty good at ‘just a trim please'. I’m going back to my painting now and leave you with the computer. Do you want to go for a walk this evening? How do you feel about pizza in the park for supper?”
Quiet settled in Dez’s home as they each focused on their individual tasks. Emmie agreed that pizza in the park would be a good idea. They each had a quiet day. Dez finding herself in paint, art and creativity again. Emmie learning just a bit more about communication with the outside world and how she wanted to participate in it. As the sun was going down, Dez and Emmie could be found in the park just past Dez's home, talking over these things that had been as tucked away in the closets of their minds just as Dez's half finished canvas and paints had been hidden.
