I am a closet fan of wigs. Hats, too. Those groovy little Fascinators that all the hoity-toity chic people are wearing are gorgeous and I aim to have one. Of course, I don't want to have just any old Fascinator. I want to buy it in London, myself, so I'll just have to wait until I go there. Hopefully in the fall.

In the meantime, my hair is falling out. I was hoping this wouldn't happen, but clearly "hoping" and "reality" are not necessarily acquainted. Damn. (I'm experimenting with swears. On my last post, a tiny little swear was neatly replaced with stars. Checking to see if it happens again ) I have no magic wand, or as Lily Tomlin says in The Kid, "I left my magic bra and panties at home." (If you've never seen The Kid, you might want to rectify that oversight forthwith). So. No Fairy Godmother, no magic wand, no superpowers, and no reprieve. What to do?

Growing up on a farm in Northern Canada, I and my siblings were always pretending to be someone we thought far more glamorous or exciting than we happened to be. Since we didn't' have a TV, all of our pretensions to greatness came out of the books my mother read to us. Thus any given play day could include incarnations of Long John Silver, Anne of Green Gables, or Alec from The Black Stallion. My smallest brother generally ran around after the rest of us furiously demanding that we "wait up," and quite unable to manage staying in character with such short legs. This was not the best part. That was always the dress up box. One could not be Athos, Aramis, or Porthos in chore clothes. Most certainly not. And only D'Artagnan could wear the straw hat skewered with a chicken feather that magically transformed whoever grabbed it into the greatest of all the Musketeers.

In this box were three wigs. I'm not quite sure of the provenance of these treasures, but I never saw any fleas or nits, so I'm assuming they were donated by good families - probably my mother's long-suffering friends who did not live in the rural wilds and so had no clue as to why she (my mother) could be so very strange, wanting their cast off hair pieces. The wigs were perfect. Suddenly, any one of us could be someone completely different without straining the collective imaginations of our siblings. My rather handsome brother gave a speech once (he stole it from Sir Winston Churchill) wearing his idea of an English gentleman's proper attire and a scruffy brown wig. He was so good (and funny) that we didn't have the heart to tell him that Sir Winston was bulldog ugly and bald. (This all occurred after mom read us a book about WWII which included the British Prime Minister. When years later, my brother finally saw a picture of Sir Winston, he laughed so hard he couldn't tell us why he was laughing.)

Back to the wigs. I've always had long hair. Sometimes really long hair, so the wigs would never fit quite right. My cruel and ruthless siblings would inform me that all that hair, piled up under the wig caused me to look deformed in ways which "...make you look retarded." Whereupon one or another of them would demand that I give the wig up and choose some other way of getting myself into character for the forthcoming play. I usually did this without a fight because I did not like the idea of having a lumpy head - no matter what the reason. Those three wigs eventually disintegrated, and by then, we were all way past the stage of dressing up to amuse ourselves on a Saturday morning.

I find myself contemplating the wigs in the windows in the 'Hairdressers' Souq' as HWHN* calls it. These are all little stores in the same area which sell all the same things. Everything one could possibly need for a hairdressing salon. In Canada, you'd have to have a trade license to buy most of this stuff, but not here. These wigs are typical of this region. Flamboyant, long, and thick. Currently, my own hair is very short, mostly gray, and getting thinner by the day. I expect that shortly, I may be drooling outside the windows as I gaze at those wigs. But... I am remembering how I always had to give up the wigs from the dress up box, and I have decided that if it comes to that, I am going to have the blonde wig, the brown highlighted wig, and the black wig. I have no hair to make my head lumpy, and I think even all these years later, if I put on a wig, I'm going to be somebody else for awhile.

Given my weight loss, and the latest book that I read, I think I might become Amanda from The Bone Collector. Of course, to be truly authentic, the wig will have to be red and curly ...but I could live with that.

Here's to great moms, awesome siblings, good books, and endless imagination. Maybe losing my hair won't be so bad.

CE

*HWHN = He Who Hates to be Named; my wonderful, introvert husband.