Grandma Henke

It is amazing what getting a nice hair style and highlighting will do for an old woman’s ego. I think half of the fun is visiting with KayDee Smith, the cute young girl who I go to. I had to go get it highlighted after one of the sisters at church asked me if I’d decided just to let my hair go gray. (GRAY?) Not in this lifetime! White I could tolerate, but gray?

For some reason … I guess because I got my hair fixed up today … I was remembering a time when Mom was my next door neighbor.  She’d been feeling depressed and down so I took a day off work and suggested she go get a permanent and hair do to cheer her up. She did and she looked so pretty with her beautiful white hair and her make up done just so  … but was still a little blue so we decided to go for a little ride around Ivins.  I drove north on a section of roads that wasn’t paved yet and  the wind had blown some sand drifts over parts of it.  Wouldn’t you know, I got stuck.  Mom  (who was probably in her mid 70’s) insisted she would try to push the Volkswagon bus and I should try to move forward.   She told me that if it started to move I shouldn’t slow down or stop until I was out of the sand.  It did start moving very slowly so I kept going forward until I reached the pavement, which was about a half a block in length. When I stopped and turned around … there was Mom … covered with sand and sweat because she’d stayed right behind the car pushing  it all the way, in spite of the fact that the tires were spraying her with sand the entire time.  It went all over her … down her shirt, in her nose and mouth,  over the top of her head!    My face must have been one of horror when I saw her  standing there because she burst into laughter, which made me burst into laughter and we laughed so hard we both ended up sitting down on the road trying not to wet our pants while we laughed some more.    Poor mama had to go home and take a shower and wash her pretty hair … and then we chatted and laughed some more while I curled it and fixed it as pretty as I could. She was quite the sport about it all and said that the whole experience had succeeded to cheer her up … but that next time she would rather do it in reverse so she didn’t waste the money she spent on her hair.    So there you go.   I guess what she really had needed was a day with me!   (Anybody brave enough to try it?)