Playing Princess

It begins when you are the littlest of girls, playing dress up and pretty princess. Trying on Moms make up and dressing your barbies. Cutting and styling your dolls hair and making your unfortunate brother your client in your very own beauty shop. Now here I am, 28 years later, embarking on my every six week journey south on US23 towards one of my favorite places on earth. A place that heightens my esteem, gives me a rush of womanhood, fills me with pleasure and most of all...makes me pretty. I travel to my salon. I walk in to the hum of hair dryers, the mist of hairsprays, and the pungent odor of dyes. I'm offered a drink (water for me of corse) and it comes in a sparkly chilled flute. I sit in an over stuffed chair while looking over a wide assortment of girly magazines. I pick up a fashion one in hopes to get caught up in the fashion world since I'm obviously behind in that area (see American Idol post-ha). A smiling lady comes to me and says shes ready for me and leads me down a hallway and into a room. There are candles and new age classical music playing. I lay on a big fluffy table/bed with a huge magnified light above my face while the smiling lady prepares the wax. I close my eyes and let myself drift to the wonders of being a woman. The warm wax is applied and I'm close to sleeping...then.....RIP! I don't know how many times I have personally undergone this experience, but it still is an awful surprise to me everytime. The feeling of pure relaxation all thrown out the window with the first pull of the cloth as she rips off my face (really just pulling off the wax on my eyebrows). After shes finished with me, I follow her upstairs where I'm taken to my stylist. There I sit in a leather chair with a drape thrown across me. We discuss what she will be doing and she begins with the highlights. Once she is finished I glance in the mirror and chuckle. I look like me, but my hair is tinfoil. I was once embarassed at this sight, but looking around the salon, I'm not the only one that is undergoing such a trial. Men and women of all ages partaking of beauty treatments that make mine look simple. The timer beeps and my favorite part of the morning begins. The wash! Maybe I'm weird, but the shampoo is my favorite. Hot water, tingling scalp from my stylist fingernails, the neck and temple rub and really just someone else washing my hair while I lay in the chair and do nothing. She then cuts and turns my head this way and that. I feel like a bobble head as she is pushing it to the left, right, down and up. Then finally the witching hour is upon me, as she turns me around to face the mirror. A choir of angels is singing in the heavens, time stands still, everything around me fades and a spot light is shining on me- OK- I'm being too dramatic- but seriously it was a beautiful moment. One that I look forward too everytime I go to the salon. The moment I get to look in the mirror at the transformation. I pay my money and slowly walk out the door. My head is held a little higher, and my posture is perfect as I get in my "cool as anything" minivan and head back home to wiping butts, scraping cherrios off the floor, dishes, laundry and the many other things that a mommy gets the pleasure of doing; but every six weeks for about 3 hours I get to pull out my dusty tiara and play princess.