Joanne Woodward

When I was a kid, one of my brothers had a favorite joke insult: Want to lose ten pounds of ugly fat? Cut off your head! Somehow it was always more funny to him than it was to me.

Well, today I'm pretty sure I lost two pounds of dead weight by getting my first haircut in several months. Masks were worn, and there was social distancing between stations, but Beauty Fair is generally a nearly empty hair salon anyway. Even now, as everyone tentatively emerges from quarantine.

This afternoon was just myself and an older lady having the classic shampoo and set, in which they tease the hair to make it seem like it has twice the volume because of how much it has thinned out over the years. My issue is the opposite. My hair is so thick and heavy that I sometimes have to request the thinning scissors to lighten my load.

Frankie was glad to see me. We've known each other for a long time. He's a Moroccan immigrant who lives in my neighborhood. He used to work for Mancini de Paris years ago when Grandma Sue was a regular visitor. He always treated her so well, and he liked to say that she reminded him of Joanne Woodward.

In my mother-in-law's last couple of months, when she came to live with us, Frankie gave her one haircut in the salon and we'd talked about him coming to our home to give her the next one. That never actually happened, but I was grateful to know that he would have come had she lived a bit longer. And not so very long ago I decided to give him my business.