Traditions

As I child, between my two sisters and my brother, I had the lightest hair in the family. I was the closest thing to blonde my mother would hope to have. In fact, I actually thought I was blonde, until I got my driver’s license at 16. The woman at the counter corrected me, “Honey, your hair is brown.” All through childhood my mom would wash and rinse my hair in lemon or vinegar, and then put me outside to dry in the sun to lighten it. In truth, she used to put me outside a lot, for various things. Like, as a preschooler, when the weather was nice, she would make me a sack lunch and send me outside to eat it. I see myself standing in the driveway feeding my sandwich to our cat who was sitting on top of the car.

My little sister and I are about a year and a half apart. She was always taller than me, and bigger. She was dark haired and I was light. If my grandmother gave us some money for gifts, my mother would buy complimentary outfits for us, but my sister always got the dark vibrant colors because she was a brunette. I would get the dull drab pastel shades. I hated it.

This weekend I am going to Chicago because my Aunt will be there visiting my mom and I want to see her. Its an excuse to get away for the weekend, and my son has agreed to look after his dad. I have alot of grey hair, and I feel a certain amount of pressure, and competitiveness, to look as youthful as is possible for a woman my age, so I usually color my hair before a visit to any of my family. Last night I dyed my hair some shade of auburn brown, and to my horror, it looks pretty unnatural and very red. My younger sister can pull this off marvelously. Her hair is always some unnatural shade of purple or bronze, but me personally, I can't decide whether I made a mistake and if I should "fix" it. I know that when my mother sees me this weekend she'll express some disapointment. "Anne, I think you should be a blonde".

So that being said, I think I'll probably just go with this and see what happens. Ought to be interesting.