A friend from college is getting married this weekend in
Portland. The occasion has turned into a reunion of sorts, an event not to be
missed, as the groom-to-be was never exactly pro-marriage, or even pro-commitment, yet he is ready to
throwdown for a smart, accomplished woman who seems to authentically challenge and
complement him.
Due to various circumstances, I haven’t been able to get my
hair did and no spa time this week before my weekend trip. Not even a
mani/pedi. So, today, in the middle of our slowcay, the girls and I got into
some homemade beauty treatments.
It took hours. And patience. Lots of patience.
We started with coconut oil hair masks. We loved the result,
but somehow waiting an hour to shampoo brought my kids to the brink, “Now, Mom? Can we wash our hair NOW? I’M GETTING ITCHY. HOW MUCH
LONGER? AHHH! I CAN’T STAND IT!”
Not yet. Soon.
“BUT WHEN?!”
Shhh! I can’t hear. As soon as Interior Therapy with Jeff Lewis is over, it will be an hour. Do you
need to give up and shampoo?
“No, I’m going to try. I’m just REALLY uncomfortable. MY
HAIR IS GREASY. And I smell WEIRD.”
It was just the beginning.
After a shopping break for supplies, we returned to our day
of beauty. There were exfoliation masks with frozen cucumber slices that continually
dripped down the sides of our faces as the kids squirmed from their cold
eyeballs a comfortable distance away from me. And yes, I realize kids don’t need
exfoliation, but I do. I have learned that being a parent sometimes means
making kids do beauty treatments they don’t need. What doesn’t hurt them helps
mama.
Things got silly during our pedi-presoak, and I
wondered how much more time I had left on the beauty treatment clock.
Not to worry. We were able to fit in all of it, even our foot
masks.
Violet, my seven year old, dreams of being “the first
American nail girl” after exclusively visiting salons where the predominant language
is Vietnamese. That talk is on my list, involving a myriad of themes, such as
speaking another language does not make one not American and there are
certainly many American women who
work in cosmetology. And, perhaps she will discover other fields she
has passions for in college. On the other hand, she does a decent job, even
at this age . . . a girl can dream, can’t she?
I went with blue, Daisy chose red-orange, and Violet opted
for rainbow toes. Violet wasn’t very pleased with my rainbow handiwork when I
subbed in as the nail girl, but I promised to help her fix it tomorrow.
The beauty treatments took hours and there are a few messes
throughout the house still waiting, but toward the end of the night, Daisy
turned to me to declare, “I am so relaxed! I haven’t been anxious ALL WEEK.”
That’s not entirely true, but I didn’t realize until that
moment just how relaxed we had all become by day’s end. Home beauty treatments:
not just for budgets.