A Haircut In New Orleans
I’ve been a city dweller since just before my 18th birthday. I’ve roamed about Nashville and Washington D.C. making friends with all kinds of kinds, playing harmonica at the bus stop with a homeless man, falling in love with a pit bull stray, and finding a place of belonging among the other misfit toys. One year ago I moved into a mid size college town in south Mississippi. Today I have escaped, and I’m in a cafe in New Orleans awaiting a haircut.
There are so many wonderful things about our move to Mississippi. For one, everything is affordable. Gloria gets to go to an incredible pre school for a teeny tiny embarrassing fraction of what the worst pre school in Nashville would cost. She’s thriving. We purchased a modest 2300 squarely footed home on 1.5 acres with a porch that is the Steel Magnoliest dream of a southern porch, with space to move and play and teach Gloria to ride a bike for a teeny tiny embarrassing fraction of what this property would cost in our beloved East Nashville. I have cabinet space for every wine glass and platter that we received from our wedding, and a two car garage that not only houses our vehicles, but Alex’s pride and joy, his riding mower. I have a closet I share not with a husband, for he has his own on the other side of our large master bathroom. The concept of ‘traffic’ is cheese compared the the Nashville/D.C. traffic of my up-until-nows. And the icing on this big southern every day is her birthday cake is that Gloria gets to spend so much time with her grandparents who are angels on earth.
Our Steel Magnolia Porch and our Gloria
And here I am in this beat up robins egg colored cafe, surrounded by curly multi colored mullets, tattoos, people playing guitars and painting characters on the doors of their neon colored homes and I am just breathing in all of the delicious vaccinated weirdo heterogeneousness. I have blonde hair, not particularly unusual style, I like makeup and pretty jewelry, and why does the blonde headedness of suburbia THROW ME OFF? All I want is to be surrounded by the others. This is home to me, this is comfort, this is me.
This is the cafe. I am not the she in this photograph.
I have come to New Orleans for a haircut. Look, I love my new town, but the hair situation is a challenge. The good stylists are booked every single day in perpetuity. And the bad ones leave me looking like a crispy fried Karen. After an horrendous tone job, I decided to leave my hair to the weirdos of New Orleans. I need an excuse to get out here because, look, a kid and a full time job is just so beyond plenty, making 90 minutes from anywhere such a task. But this is a necessary one now, and I’m thankful to have an excuse to get out here for the alone time.
I want to reiterate that I love Hattiesburg, Mississippi. AND I’m so glad I’m not seeing a freaking TAHOE anywhere. I need to get back to the Subaru people. I need the 1996 vans with the curtains. I love the wheels falling off of a beat up car. I need the stray rescued dogs, not the expensive ones. I love the beautiful non pretties. I need the old original hard wood and the colorful falling apartedness. Mississippi is SO PRETTY. Pretty going to the grocery store. Pretty in a moving van in 100 degree August. Pretty waking up in the morning. Pretty centerpieces on any given Monday. I don’t think any ladies in Mississippi own sweat pants, only matching silk pajamas. Everyone’s hair is perfectly highlighted, hair extensioned, and perfectly bumped at the top.
I know this isn’t true 100% of the time, but let’s be real, at LEAST 78%.
And please don’t have hard feelings, my Mississippi darlings. I’m just indulging in some harmless over exaggeration. If you moved to my hometown, you’d be like WTF this isn’t my jam, and that’d be ok. We all come from what we come from and adapt the best we can. I feel like I do a pretty decent job in Hattiesburg, and I’ve truly been loved and cared for and taken in by everyone here. I am deep fried in butter love here and I’m grateful. I don’t have the hair bump nailed, and I show up with no makeup to the store and horrify the beautiful ladies, but my kid gets a bow in her hair most days, so that feels like a win.
All I can say is that living in close enough proximity to a city as special as New Orleans makes it all ok. It’s a perfect escape. Worlds weirder than Nashville’s wildest gentrified imagination. My breaths are deeper here, some because of the liquid air, and some because I get to disappear into a city. You know how you’re always on display in a smaller town? Everyone knows your car and sees you everywhere you go? That really threw me off when I first got to Mississippi. You can’t do anything in anonymity in a small town. But y’know, you get fed in a small town. And the food is genuinely cooked with love. You get people’s concern and compassion. I’m from a much smaller town than this, and I forgot how helpful people are in a small community. People check in on you in a small town. People offer to help you move in a small town. I moved no less than 26 times in DC and Nashville and MAN don’t you feel bad asking for help in a city outside of a natural disaster? People just show up with a pickup truck in a small town.
So maybe this is the time in my life where I get to have the best of all possible worlds. Aside from your pecan poisons in every single baked good turning me into an anaphylaxissed balloon, we’re the very best of pals. New Orleans to keep me weird, Hattiesburg to keep me connected. Lucky.
