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Freedom and Fabulousness in a Bottle


The scent is unforgettable. Luxury perfected in brown goo.  Wella Balsam shampoo. 

My mother cut my hair at the kitchen table, and yes, she once used a bowl.  Saturday nights she set my thick straight hair with prickly curlers held in place with sharp plastic picks. Sunday mornings, I was cranky, but had wonderfully bouncy hair. Mom had naturally curly hair and so her greatest challenge was remembering to remove from her forehead, the piece of Scotch tape she used to keep her bangs in place. This usually happened just as Dad turned our avocado green Ford into the church parking lot.  She’d turn around to the back seat for one last check of our appearance, spitting into a Kleenex to tame my wild locks, combing my brother’s hair with her fingers.

Thus, I entered the House of God, sleep deprived and moulded by spit.

In the early 1970’s when tight curls became the rage, a new form of hair torture arrived in our house: The TONI Home Perm kit. In a careful procedure that took most of an hour, my mother wound my hair around various coloured pins, before applying the eye watering chemical solution that had to remain for what seemed like another hour.  The house filled with the stench of it, no matter how quickly she slapped that plastic bag over my scalp to trap the vapour. It was a routine we followed monthly. There were tears. Lots of tears.

In 1976, my mom admitted hair defeat. Vidal Sassoon had invented an asymmetrical style that I just had to have. She drove me to a professional hair dresser, and not one who operated out a room in her own house, but a hair salon in a strip mall at the edge of town.  My wedge phase was underway.

Through-out the bouncy flip and fake-Afro, there was but one shampoo for our family: Halo, a yellow, bargain brand product that looked and smelled like rotting eggs. Once, I actually did add an egg to my hair-washing routine, as my friends were doing it for fuller, thicker hair.  Mom wasn’t impressed that I’d wasted food. Or perhaps from years of trying to tame it, she knew my hair was thick and full enough already.

With a part-time job and the extravagance of a strip mall hair cut, it was time for me to buy my own shampoo. I chose the brand used by the women whose jobs, lives and hair I wanted: Jaclyn Smith, Cheryl Ladd and Farrah Fawcett. Charlie’s Angels chose Wella Balsam shampoo and so would I!

Just opening the cap of the exotic round bottle took me away from the farm to the life of passion and adventure that surely awaited high school graduation. The balsam scent was exhilarating and unlike anything I’d ever sniffed before. With this scent in my hair, I had the world at my feet.

I did not, in fact, go on to become a glamourous and thin under-cover detective. My first full-time jobs were in the hotel industry where I had ample access to free shampoos, soaps and lotions (and actually met Kate Jackson!!!).  When, eventually, the time came for me to again buy my own personal care products, I, again, chose Wella Balsam.  The scent had not changed, nor the feeling: freedom and fabulousness.

Many decades have passed. Today, I don’t give my hair much thought at all. Every couple of months I go to the Hair Cutters in town and pay twenty bucks for a wash and a trim. No conditioner please. No scented products.  I am my mother’s daughter.  I use my own spit to force my bangs into a wave above my forehead. And, I look for a bargain when buying shampoo.



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