Andie and her hair. She was obsessed with it. Too limp, too thin, and the big one TOO COLORLESS.

There is a picture of me holding a 4 month old Andie on my lap, my thumb and forefinger pinched together about 3 inches above her little bald head. One solitary blonde hair. I used to call her my little Zed (They have one hair upon thier heads... from the book One Fish Two Fish). I had forgotten that until now. It seems a bit fortuitous? that she took the name of Zee as a stage name.

Andie was white blonde throughout her preteen years. When she was nearly 6 I did something she still had not forgiven me for when she was an adult. I found locks of blonde hair on the bathroom floor and I was so certain it was Andies. It appeared too light to be her baby sister's (on the head Hilary's hair was very slightly darker than Andie's) besides a near 3 year old would not be able to manage scissors and Andie was smitten with her paper scissors.

Never jump to conclusions. Some women may remember Flicker Razors ? Hilary had somehow reached the one in my shower (god only knows how) and combed her hair with it. it was her hair on the floor of the bathroom.

Poor Andie, Ihad warned her when she was playing around with the paper scissors once that I would cut her hair short if she cut her hair. Well I did. Her waist length hair cut to her shoulders. She was so angry. I think mostly because I didn't beleive her. Hilary's hair still being quite uneven shaggy and baby fine you couldn't tell she had cut it. I have to say and I reminded Andie of this everytime she brought the unfortunate incident up, that cutting it had helped it to thicken up. i didn't need to cornrow plait it after every washing in order to make it look fuller when brushed out.

Getting curl or wavei in to it was another matter altogether. That didn't happen until her mid teens a very soft loose wave which she hated more than straight. Some women! You just can't please them.

the COLOR (I use caps because this was Andie's biggest gripe).

It was naturally a gorgeous bleached wheat blonde. She called it beige and said it made her look beige. When she was 7 she had a little nightie with small girl complaining "But Mom, ALL my friend have green hair." I should never have given her that.

GREEN
Andie's first adventure in hair colouring was when she was 13, green koolaid and vinegar on her blonde hair. And my god it worked. You could really only see it in the sunlight but what a shock. At the time she was enrolled in a fundamental baptist school. They were not happy. But I could not get the stuff out and I refused to use real hair colour on her, so they had to live with it until it washed out.

PINK
One halloween Andie 17, (by this time I had given up trying to cointrol what she did to her hair), Andie had a small tumble down the stairs while carrying a bottle of HOT PINK Manic Panic hair colouring. It comes out of the bottle looking quite red. And it was on the stairs, on my oatmeal brown living room carpet on the walls. We had to hang picture over the stain on the wall. We lived in log cabin where the walls were made of.... you guessed it.... wood.

So the scene is me mopping up and swearing somewhere south of a sailor's profanity repertoire, Andie is mopping up and crying about the wasted hair dye, and Hilary (13) bless her non chalantly walks in and says (dead pan as you like) "That's funny, the blood usually gets off at the 2nd floor."   Well we all started laughing then.

CLEAR
Andie wanted clear hair. She thought that would be the coolest thing and not done by anyone. I told her that clear hair = NO hair. Then I told her to design a fibre optic wig and she could have it any colour at any time, including clear. That brought forth some comment about my being silly. Me? Silly? whowants clear hair?

Andie almost got her wish, re CLEAR hair but only as I described it. I came home one Sunday from church to be greeted by my lovely daughter homefrom university at the door. Her hair was wet and gooey. She was crying pannicking. Too many chemicals had started melting her hair. Too soon after a permanent, she had dyed black and then was trying to bleach it. All within a couple of weeks of each other.

I filled kitchen sink with cold water and dunked her head under, drained the sink and repeated umpteen times. How do you baptise a silly 18 year old? Do you dunk em once, do you dunk twice or do you hold em under until they really repent?

She was a bit more careful after that. And as she had concerts a university with choirs, she was not permitted to have peculiarly coloured hair (or her face piercings -another matter).

RED
Not for the first time but certainly for the last, When she passed away her hair was red. Not naural human hair red. Kindergarten tempra paint red, Stop Sign red, Fire engine red. There were a few hairs on her SCA mantle (I buried her in her house garb) and I collected them and put them in a ziplock bag.

That is the tale of Andie's hair.