DON’T BREAK THE HABIT

     Many years ago in the early halcyon days of my marriage, my then-husband and I were friendly with a Manhattan-based couple.  Time was often spent with them celebrating good wine, food, laughter and the incessant pleasures of the city.  Cris and Janet had just been married and were happyto join us in the care-free, spur of the moment decisions ‘to do somethingfun’---often typical of newlyweds.

     Cris’ father was a tailor, one who was enmeshed in the old-fashioned, old world value of pride in one’s skill.  For him, tailoring was serious business.  He was skilled in many types of fashion but the one he treasured the most was the tailoring he did for a group of Catholic nuns.  You can imagine his horror when his son asked to borrow some of those habits.

      As the day approached, the four of us had agreed to not break the habit of celebrating Halloween, pardon the pun.  We would don the vestments for the festivities.  Definitely having two six feet tall males in such attire would surely help us win a prize or, at the very least, put us in our own spiritual category.

      Halloween morning arrived.  Unfortunately, some  evil witch had put a hexon me and I woke up with nausea of epic proportions.  God was punishing us!  No forays into Manhattan dressed as nuns!  Yet, some kindly saint must have taken pity on me for as the day wore on the nausea subsided.   We would not be dissuaded from our celebration.  Did the fact that we would don our attire and celebrate the next day matter?? NO!  So a new game plan was formulated with a little twist.  “How about hitting some of the bars and discoson Second Avenue and then going to St. Vincent Ferrer’s church on Lex. where we were married, ringing the bell and asking for the monsignor. C’mon, he’s gotta think this is a hoot!, said Cris.

                       Twenty-four hours later, in ready position and fully garbed, we began our pilgrimage.                        What followed were unending waves of laughter, side glances, snickers and one particularly boisterous truck driver shouting out to me, “Hey,sister, you ain’t never  gonna’ get to heaven that way!!”  Bar after bar, disco after disco, we continued out aberrant, hysterical fantasy, laughing until our sides hurt.  This was to be topped off by our final stop, St. Vincent Ferrer’s
rectory.  Standing with my partners-in-crime, I rang the bell near the old wooden door on top of a never-ending staircase.  No one answered.   I rang again.  Slowly, the door opened and a young priest quizzically looked our way then burst out into peals of laughter.  “We’re here to see the monsignor.”
“Oh my God!!   I don’t know if he can handle this” as he ran off to fetch him.

     Out of the shadows slowly emerged a grey haired figure, slightly slouchedover so that his eyes did not meet ours immediately.  He stared.   A little smile started to make his thin lips curl, then it  became wider,  broader  until it finally erupted into a full out, belly shakin’ body laugh.  I thought the man was going to choke.

     Yes, it was funny that there were four people dressed as nuns who weren’t nuns, two of whom were men but would that evoke such a paroxysm of laughter?  I guess it was the one thing I failed to mention.  I was eight and a half months pregnant with my daughter and holding a sign that read, in big
letters,  “NUNS FOR OPTIONAL CELIBACY”.

     I guess the truck driver was right.

the long and the short of it

I have come to the conclusion that curly hair is the abomination of mankind.Now, for those of you who have straight, little or no hair, I realize this is probably falling on deaf ears, but state my case I must.


 Curly locks of golden hue are often something to be admired.  As a young child, thus was I adorned.  Of course, those were the days of Shirley Temple so having this feature was considered a bonus.  A child blessed by the gods with a golden crown.

As the years marched forward, the golden hair color, so shiny and soft, was over-taken by its darker counter-part.  Everything changed; even the level of curliness.  I guess curls are more ornery than hair color because they became more pronounced, more unruly and more independent possibly a metaphor
for life as one ages.  I started to look like the Italian version of little Orphan Annie.

 Yet, like the curls, rebellion was on my agenda.  Rebellion that surfaced during my teen-age years.  I was certainly not going to let these ornery little critters get the best of me!  Consequently, pre-date rituals often involved bending forward with head placed in close proximity to a rickety old ironing
board and ironing those  curls into oblivion.  I had morphed from Shirley Temple into Cher.  Yet, even then, there were drawbacks.  Straight hair comes with its own set of rules.  It couldn’t rain, have the slightest hint of humidity or any air moving faster than the speed of a snail or little Orphan Annie was back again.  But I soon came to realize that the only person at 50+ years who can have hair like Cher’s  and still look good is Cher.  So it was back to the drawing board and not the ironing board.

The next phase involved various hair twists and turns---a cacophony of styles designed to match facial weight gains and losses---Audrey Hepburn pixie haircut, Kate Middleton long haired “do” with barrette at crown, American Indian braids, short, long and everything-in-between bangs and finally, what
I have today, post-menopausal teen-ager with pony tail.  It is like being on a pilgrimage to find the Holy Grail.  My head needs a traffic cop.  Vidal Sasson,where are you when we need you????

 I had resigned myself to being at the mercy of churlish curls but then realized that the longer the hair, the less the curl.  This is the only instance in space and time where, for a woman, weight is a good thing.  And just when the curls and I had made peace with one another, what did I see as I gazed into the mirror?  Was that a grey hair?  Several grey hairs???  Oh, no!! Now that the curl girl had been sent to greener pastures, her kissin’ cousin, color------GREY color had reared its ugly head.  You just can’t seem to win.