Hair today, gone tomorrow

The hardest part about moving is saying goodbye.

They say it’s better to have loved and lost, that it’s a gift to have someone or something worth grieving.

But that doesn’t make goodbye any easier. You feel it in every fiber of your being. Every inch of your body. If you’re really unlucky (or lucky, to miss it?) your hair suffers worst of all.

When you move towns, you start a long saga of adjustments, new beginnings, and a seemingly endless hunt for replacement goods and services. Changes of address, Wi-Fi and utilities setup, finding a new go-to coffee shop — you see to the essentials quickly.

Anything that can technically wait, but probably shouldn’t, gets put off because the quest is too tiresome, the risks too perilous, and the frustration really darn high.

Which is a long way of saying I’ve put off a haircut I should have gotten two months ago. Because if I can’t go to my longtime friend and preferred stylist Michael Matthias, then I don’t want a haircut at all. (Shameless promotion for Mystique here — and you know I’m not getting a free session for it, because I’m too far away to get one).

Except I really do. Because split ends are as unsightly as they make hair harder to keep brushed. And long hair stops saying “mermaid” and starts screaming “Garth from ‘Wayne’s World’” sometime around month eight after your last trim.

This sounds like a frivolous concern if you’ve never had a GOOD haircut. While it certainly isn’t Israel-Palestine-conflict-important, the difference in a haircut and a GOOD trim are pretty surprising.

If you have to pay to trim your hair (and we all seem to agree that matted hair is a health concern), you might as well pay to have your hair look good – and keep looking good. Professional stylists who know what they’re doing can help you go longer between trims by ensuring any layers are done artfully enough to actually look good 5 months from now. Sure, hair professionals will know when your hair is due for a trim anyway, but most of us can’t tell unless your bangs are hanging past your nose or your layers are so choppy it looks like you got it stuck in a round brush.

So the stakes are high.

I went into my appointment with trepidation. It was nice, but not too nice. They offered coffee — a good omen. Too good? It had been dumping rain, soaking me to the bone in the minute it took to make it from vehicle to front door.

The stylist was nice. (Too nice? Lulling me into submission with her talk of James Brown — the cat, of course — and his endless crooning, his possessive nature, his bottomless zeal for snacks?)

The cut was … good. The clouds lifted (it stopped raining). I’m a loyalist, so no one will ever replace No. 1, but I suppose this story has a mostly happy ending. A “happy for now” if not a true “happily ever after” as modern romance writers call it.

If there’s any silver lining of goodbyes, it’s the hellos that follow. Even if your hair doesn’t look quite as polished.

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Elena Johnson can be reached at [email protected].