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Eileen, my mother, had long, light brown hair that she wore in a bun at the back of her head. That simple, pulled-back style suited her strong looks. As a little girl, I thought all mothers should wear their hair that way. She never needed to go to a beauty parlor, because her hair style was homemade.
One day when I was in my early teens, however, Eileen went to the local hairdresser, a woman who operated out of her house, with a couple of sinks in the front room. She specialized in giving permanents. Hairdressers in our town were not thick on the ground, and Eileen had little experience with them. Hair "stylists" didn't exist in those days, at least not in our neck of the woods. Going to the hairdresser meant having your hair washed, cut, and set in little pin curls. And if you wanted a more permanent "do", then you asked for that same little pin curl arrangement but made permanent with chemicals. I don't know why Eileen decided to do it, but she went down the street and came home with her hair chopped off and tightly curled. Typically, for Eileen, her thoughts remained private.
Did she do it out of boredom? Anger? Was it a hormonal moment? Who knows? But that short, permed hair was so far from her usual image that we barely knew her. She hated it immediately, of course, but it was designed to be permanent, or at least temporarily permanent. Her stylish and artistic friend Phoebe told her to let it grow out and go back to the stylish chignon; Phoebe said if Eileen ever did the cut-and-perm trick again, that would be the end of their friendship.
So Eileen let her hair grow out, and gradually the perm disappeared, and she wore it in a bun again and all was well with the world. Who wants a mother to change?
Some twenty years later, Eileen's hair was much thinner, and grey instead of brown. With the children grown and gone, more money was available for frills. Also, the town was now more sophisticated, boasting not just one but several hair salons. So Eileen began visiting George once a week. She called him "the magician." She would arrive home perfectly coiffed. It was George who persuaded her to buy a little fluff of grey curls, and he showed her how to wear it. She pulled her own hair back from her face with tiny combs. And then she attached the little fluff of grey curls to look as if she had a mass of curly hair at the back of her head. Well, she did have a mass of curly hair there. It's just that it wasn't really her hair. This look suited her, and she wore her hair that way for the rest of her life. But she still went to the magician once a week.
For the rest of us, there has been no magician. Eileen's father, John Vincent Rahilly ("Bin", to his daughters), is bald in the few pictures we have of him. And that no-hair gene passed on through Eileen to my three brothers, all of whom have only tiny fringes of hair across the back of their heads. Grass doesn't grow on a busy street. God made some heads perfect; the rest he had to cover with hair. And so forth. My brother Jerry's three boys are as bald as he is (can we still blame that on Eileen and her father?). Two of my brother Dinty's four boys are also bald.
My sister Sari's hair was extraordinarily thin because of a childhood illness. In her twenties, she used to buy wigs, rail at fortune, and cry a lot. In her sixties, she had more important things to think about. In fact, she was probably the only woman around who welcomed the follicular ravages of chemotherapy, because at least that gave her a temporary excuse for lacking hair.
Several months before her sudden death, Sari sent me this joke: A woman woke up one morning and had only three hairs left on her head. "Goodie!" she said. "Today I'll braid my hair." And she did, and she had a wonderful day. The next day she woke up and had only two hairs on her head. "Today," she said, "I'll part my hair in the middle." And she did, and she had a wonderful day. The next day she woke up and had only one hair left on her head. "Today," she said, "I'll wear my hair in a ponytail." And she did, and she had a wonderful day. The next day she woke up totally bald, not a hair on her head. "Hooray!" she said, "I don't have to do my hair today!"
Our baby sister, Mary Eileen, born to a more rested and thus less depleted mother, has always had masses of curly dark hair—the kind that needs to be thinned. I've never had much sympathy for women who complain that their hair is so thick they can't do anything with it. This does not count as a problem.
About two years ago, my own follicles simply stopped replacing the hairs that fell out during the routine shedding that happens to all human heads. My hair has never been thick, so it didn't take me long to notice what was happening.
Now I'm looking for reasons, looking for remedies, and not looking in the mirror. Is it natural? Is it simply part of the aging process? Maybe, to both of those questions.
But I like to think that if I could just find the one thing that's wrong, the one little systemic glitch that's telling my follicles not to function, I'd solve the problem (and make a fortune into the bargain).
Or I can just accept my lot with good grace.
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