A Story Of Hair

This is a story about haircuts and photographs and delightful discoveries and memory.

Last winter my mother was in need of a haircut, despairing at the length of her wavy gray locks. "I look like an old hag," she said. "Old women shouldn't wear long hair." We talked a bit about how she wanted to have her hair cut and the particular problems that those of us with thick, coarse hair face in the hairdresser's chair.

"I must have been about 14 when I had my first real haircut," she said, "and it was a disaster. That woman just lopped it off. I never forgave her." She related how the next day she was going on an expedition with her father and his writerly and photographerly friends and she had to cope with that horrendous haircut. "We were going to Letchworth to see the Mary Jemison statue and the monument to New York Dragoons and I looked just awful. I think there are pictures somewhere."

And pictures there are! 

But the best part is my delight as I found that expedition chronicled in the newspaper, penned by another participant in the trip.

From that story:

"But here we are at the Inn ... and there
are Bill Fish and daughter Barbara,
the little princess of a few years ago
and little princess still."

And then there was this:

"Then to the Civil War Parade Ground, now equipped
as a park center with a large new shelter house
and outdoor tables with tops of cut bluestone and fireplaces.
There Bill Fish's father was once stationed;
and Martin took the pictures of Bill and Barbara
standing beside the great boulder with its
bronze memorial tablets."

I was excited to share my finds with my mother. "See," she said. "That haircut was awful."