I was in a beauty shop today talking to a group of elderly residents of a city that has grown too big for its britches as they will gladly tell you.
It was an interesting prospective on how growth can affect those that nurtured a community before the rest of the world discovered its charm. In the middle of this exchange I noticed the most beautiful young women I had ever seen. She was sitting in the cutters chair, under a hair dryer, big pink rollers tightly wound with what would later turn out to be long luscious black hair, shoulder length, full and sensual. The kind a man would gladly give anything to run his fingers through. Hair that on a Sunday afternoon picnic would cover her sparkling eyes as the wind caught it and spent a few extra minutes exploring before going on its way to tease others with less then this women had to offer. She had to be 23, maybe 24. At the beginning of what would be a life where age never affected her beauty. She would surely age but the years would only add character to this face. As an old women she would have charm, grace and style. You knew that immediately.
I watched her out of the corner of my eye as I continued with my conversation with the women who had seen a full life, husbands, children, hard times. Nature had not been as kind to these women as it would be to the young girl with the pink curlers.
When the dryer stopped and the stylist began working her magic with that wonderful canvas I excused myself and made my way over in her direction. She was gracious to a stranger, polite, kind and warm hearted. She turned the conversation to me, what I was doing, how it felt to be away from home and friends for so long. She made me long for the embrace of someone close. Someone who could look into my soul and see the depth of my emotions. She had the ability to take your heart, hold it gently in her palm, exam it, find that which is good and gently place it back in your chest before you knew it had even been touched. She was exceptional.
We talked for the 45 minutes that it took the stylist to finish the appointment. Amazingly I discovered that this individual lived alone, had an entry level position with a local insurance company and had hopes someday of achieving the status of office manager supervising her 27 co-workers.
I sat there listening to her hopes and dreams, her expectations of a life to come and was quietly confused on how this natural beauty could have such minor expectations of what would surely turn out to be a life full of excitment and love. Never did she mention a man, a family, travel or the normal things one would expect a young woman to dream. She had more modest hopes, dreams almost without excitment.
As time was nearing for her to leave, the stylist gone to retrieve some lotion to massage into her neck, we sat and talked for the final few minutes. I felt a loss over knowing that I would never see this person again. A deep sadness that I would never know of the things she would experience.
Returning, the stylist finished, and gently removed the long colorful cotton shawl that had been protecting the young woman during the styling session. I was taken back. Here was this beautiful women, exposed now, heavy set with legs deformed from lack of use. Suddenly, the cashier was bringing a wheelchair that had been unseen in the front corner of this neighborhood beauty saloon. She was lifted in quickly by others in the shop, composed herself and one could tell immediately that this was the environment to which she was most comfortable. The radiance returned to her face seconds after being manhandled from the styling chair back into the chair with wheels.
I realized her lack of expectations for the future. She did not expect to have a life full of romance, financial success, or excitment. She had resolved that a peaceful existence within the world she knew was better than the unknown. She had given up on the stories told to all children. The expectations placed by parents had been robbed by the cruelty of her peers.
I ask you, when have we as a society decided that the vessel is more important than the content of an individual, the random placement of the cheekbones, the color of the eyes, the sheen of the hair? When has the height, the weight, the mobility of the limbs overtaken the depth of an individuals soul, their ability to feel compassion, to love, to provide emotiional stability and constant support?
When we look at another person we can only see the cantainer that a natural selection process has provided. We can not see, unless we take the time, the heart that lies within the physical container. How many times have we let someone of extraordinary character, a wealth of knowledge and compassion, let slip through our fingertips because the container was not what our preconcieved notion of beauty would allow?
I have...on a warm sunny day in a neighborhood beauty shop in a little town in North Georgia. And it makes me sad. It makes me less of a human being, less of the person that I strive to be.
On the radio, Bonnie Tyler's ' Total Eclipse of the Heart' plays.