Wednesday, September 7, 2011

What Color Is My Parachute?

He was my ex-husband.

He had been my ex-husband 18 years ago. We were held together by the threads of our children. When we divorced, we had a 3 month old daughter and a 3 year old son.

He and I had spent time growing up together and then growing apart as well. Our son turned 21 in August the year I turned 42. My husband John was about 5 years older than me at this time. John had been diagnosed with brain cancer a couple of years earlier. Over the 18 years we had been divorced, we became friends on a totally different level.

On August 31st, we celebrated our son's 21st birthday together, with his wife and my new husband Alex. This is the true story of what transpired.

John had given me a gift certificate for Elizabeth Arden's Red Door for Mother's Day. (No, his wife was perfectly okay with this expensive and extravagant gift.) After all, he was not my most recent husband at all. And she understood that John and I loved each other from "way back".

We took my son to the Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco the night after I had gone in for my day at the Red Door. I decided that if I only had one life to live, let me live it as a blond.

I emerged from the day of beauty that included a facial, a manicure, a pedicure, a massage, a professional make over and as a blond after 40 years of being a brunette.

Oddly as a natural brunette, I made a good blond. Light hair throws more light on your face than dark. My former husband looked at me across the table with his wife and my husband and my son sitting there and said the following words. He would die within a year without knowing the answer.

"So what did you do about your black bush?"

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