Hair

When my sister Susi went off to Temple Buell college, she went through what I remember as a bit of a "hippie" period. Remember, I was a twelve year-old in Atlantic, Iowa. She was a groovy coed in Denver - arriving home from college with wire frame glasses and fringed jeans. She also had a stack of record albums.

I'd grown up listening to my sister's music and still feel fortunate today that I was exposed to that "crazy rock" music as a kid in the 1960's. The summer after Susi's freshman year of college she came home and set up a bedroom in the basement. Evidently she and Cindy could no longer co-exist in the small bedrooms we sisters grew up in. Susi slept on the fold-out couch that summer. That had to be comfy!

Besides the black and white television in that room - the thing that attracted me was Susi's stereo. I loved to listen to her tunes. I don't know if I had permission or not - but it made me feel so cool! Susi was a lifeguard over at Lake Anita that summer - back in the days when state parks provided amenities like that.

We had great fun with the Kool sailboat

That was around the same time that Mom saved up a bunch of Salem cigarette cartons to get a sailboat for some ridiculous price. It was basically made out of Styrofoam...so she then purchased an epoxy kit with fiberglass fabric and we helped her glue it onto the bottom of the boat - that was named "Bullfrog".

Cindy and Susi were veteran sailors from their years at Camp Lake Hubert in Minnesota. They were shipped off to that camp for a few weeks each summer for a few years. That's where Susi learned to play the guitar too. Cindy only figured out the ukulele....

I'm not sure how Mom knew how to sail. Dad pretended to know how to sail. That's how his wallet ended up on the bottom of Lake Anita. They always joked that they should have put the name Bullfrog on upside down - because that's how they often sailed it! Don and Jane Deter used to head over to the lake with Mom and Dad too. I think cocktails were involved.

One of the albums I learned to love the summer Susi was a Lake Anita lifeguard was "Hair".

Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there, hair, shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there, momma, everywhere, daddy, daddy

I've been thinking of that lately - as my hair falls. Thinning hair is a side-effect of Graves Disease and the drug Methimazole (yes, I'm on Meth) I take to block the hormones my thyroid was pumping out.

I've blogged before about how I don't have the hair gene. That's true...but I am a girl! I don't like seeing my hair change like this. Even the texture of it is different. Ugh. I do what I can - but hope I can get off this drug soon. Maybe then my hair will start perking up. I didn't always like my waves - but now I'm thinking they weren't so bad...

Until then, I'll keep humming "gimmee a head with hair!"