The Pretty Blonde Haired Lady

The Pretty Blonde Haired Lady

        This is the story of the Pretty Blonde Haired Lady. The Pretty Blonde Haired Lady was my Mom.

           Mom was not blonde a day in her life! When Mom was a little girl she had beautiful long wavy brunette hair.

          Then when she was sixteen, Mom got the start of a gray streak, ever so narrow, starting at her widow's peak. Her hair was like that until the birth of her third child at the age of 25. We are always sure to blame this on brother Eric. When Eric was born, the gray streak in Mom's hair started to get wider and wider until at the age of 30, Mom had to admit that she was prematurely gray.

          So she began to dye her hair. Once a month Mom would go to the basement and put on rubber gloves. In front of a tiny round mirror on a stand, Mom meticulously applied the darkest shade of hair dye that Lady Clairol made.

          And this continued all through her thirties.

          When Mom turned forty, she was tired of the hair dying, and the roots were growing so fast that Mom was doing the dying even more often than once a month. So she decided to put a rinse in her hair instead – this was less permanent and would allow her natural color to come through without it looking like just roots were growing. Mom was curious about what her hair was like after ten years – was it all gray? Salt and pepper mix of gray and brunette? Maybe more brunette than she had remembered? If she liked what she saw, she would keep it, and if she did not, Mom could always go back to dying it again.

          Well, what grew out was the most beautiful, thick, wavy, almost fluorescent white white hair! It was stunning and distinctive. Mom decided to keep it!

          After that we were so used to seeing Mom with that white hair, it was hard to remember a time when she was otherwise!

          One night at the dinner table Mom started to chuckle and said there was a man who had walked into the law office that day. An elderly man. He sat in the waiting room which is where Mom worked at her desk, and he waited for the lawyer to be ready to talk to him. When Mom's boss got off the phone and walked into the front office, he greeted the client and apologized for making him wait. The man stood up, gave an old geezer kind of dirty old man laugh and said, “I didn't mind waiting, I got to sit here and look at the Pretty Blonde Haired Lady!”

          And we all chuckled along with Mom because the story was funny – Mom was not blonde! 

          Well everyone chuckled except for Dad. He did not think it was one bit funny that someone other than Mom's husband was calling her a Pretty Blonde Haired Lady. If anyone was going to call Mom a Pretty Blonde Haired Lady, it would be her husband, and him alone!

          For the next twenty or so years, Mom got used to being called the Pretty Blonde Haired Lady by my Dad.

Mom & Dad 1978

          We would be at the mall, and when it was time to meet up to go home, we'd be standing at the door waiting for Mom. And then we would see her – so distinctive in the crowd. As she got within hearing distance, Dad would say, “here comes that Pretty Blonde Haired Lady now!”

          On Sunday mornings when Dad made breakfast and summoned Mom to the table by putting either Al Martino's Mary in the Morning or Ed Ames' My Cup Runneth Over With Love on the stereo, and Mom walked down the stairs to the kitchen with a slight grin on her face, Dad would say, “Well there's the Pretty Blonde Haired Lady!”

          We forgot that Mom was not blonde – because we were used to the fact that she was – the Pretty Blonde Haired Lady.

         After Dad passed away, one afternoon Mom went to the cemetery where his ashes are buried. She said that she got out of the car and was walking across the lot when she heard just as clear as can be, “Well, there's the Pretty Blonde Haired Lady!” 

          And Mom said that such a sense of peace came over her then!

          I was so glad that Mom shared that story with me. Because that day years later, when Mom was saying goodbye and gave us a kiss and said she loved us and then closed her eyes – I knew without a doubt that the next thing Mom heard was Dad's voice, and I'm positive she heard him saying, “Here comes that Pretty Blonde Haired Lady now!”

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