If a mother gets her hair cut & colored, and no one notices, does she exist?
Yesterday I arrived home with my annual birthday cut & color and no one said a word. Over dinner, I complained that I didn’t exist.
“I noticed,” said my youngest son, “I just thought…” and he made a disgusting face. His idea of a mother is a stationary object that remains the same.
“I like it. I noticed it right away,” said my husband. “I just didn’t think it was a good time to say anything.“
I had berated him when he arrived home from work– an hour late– without our youngest who he had forgotten to pick up from school.
“I can’t tell the difference,” my oldest said, and then quickly modified his response when I dramatically explained that my hair had been shoulder length that morning and was now close to my chin!
“Well, you just look really good tonight,” he said, “but until you told me, I didn’t know what it was.”
He then added that if I wanted him to “notice” my hair, that I should go to a chop shop, like Super Cuts, where there would be no mistake that my “look” had been altered.
I left the dinner table to marvel at my new haircut in the bathroom mirror– by myself.
The Empty Nest Diary 