Surviving Perfect

At the store, whenever I couldn't find her, I looked for her hair. A subtle blonde beehive that was washed, set, teased, and sprayed into place every Thursday morning at Larry's Coiffures.

Both the style and the meticulousness with which it was arranged defined her. It was both rigid and buoyant at the same time. As was she. But there was great security in knowing exactly where she was, whether that be at the salon or just an aisle or two over at the Base Exchange. 

For all the forthcoming and derisive analysis, I want it known that I never once doubted her love for me or her unequivocal belief that I could achieve anything I set my mind to. Both these truths were fostered daily in many subtle and profound ways. But from the distance of time and many hundreds of hours' worth of navel-gazing I can honestly see now that to my mother, I was also a projection of her need for self-perfection.

I was a pudgy and precocious little girl who assumed the world revolved around me. If I was EVER shy or demure it was short lived. By the age of five I was quite certain you wanted to be my friend. A trait I hope never to outgrow.

To my mom though, I was an accessory to who she was. Something to be dressed, molded, and perfected, in ways she couldn't derive perfection for herself. if she couldn't successfully lose weight, by God I would. I mean, what would it say about HER if her daughter was a roly-poly little thing?  So, I was shuffled into a room of heavyset, middle-aged women at the age of eight to attend WeightWatchers meetings. taught to carefully weigh myself and my food. Who would have guessed that for the next 40 years I would struggle with food and body acceptance issues??

What would people THINK if my hair was unkempt and flat? So, most evenings, I was positioned like a doll at my mother's feet so she could tug, brush, and pin my slightly damp hair into little coils around my head before trundling off to bed in a helmet of bobby pins that would dry in my uncomfortable sleep. How might my idea of beauty be different if she had just acknowledged neither of us had God-given ringlets of flaxen hair? Instead, once scientific improvements were made to over the counter perms, that same damp hair would be wound around plastic rods of torture while acid and whatever other foul-smelling concoctions it needed was doused upon my head like a vinegar-laced baptism. It should be no surprise that even now, I tell people my variously-colored hair is from L'Oréal...because I'm worth it.