My Mother's Shop

by Joanne Blum, Ph.D.

My mother opened her first beauty shop in 1958. It was a bold move. With a husband unemployed, three children under age 12, and a recently built house for which they were behind in payments, my mother, instead of panicking and pitying herself, threw her six months of beauty school training into high gear. Borrowing a few hundred dollars from her parents in a distant state, which she would repay with interest, Mom signed a lease on a small shop in downtown Cincinnati where the previous owner had gone bankrupt. My mother knew she would not. She called the place Danielle, after my middle name, gently relocated the few customers she'd been doing in her laundry room to this new location, and, as she put it, "stepped out on faith."

From that humble beginning, Danielle Beauty Salon grew into a large city salon, employing 11 beauticians, a wig specialist, and a full-time receptionist in a refurbished Victorian house in Galion, Ohio. Her business became capable of putting three children through college--two of them simultaneously--with enough money left over for a down payment on a condo in Florida and membership at a local country club. My mother got more milage out of her beautician's license than most people do out of Ph.D.'s, myself included.

As a 4 and 5-year-old, I spent my days happily playing in the roller trays, sitting under dryers, and listening to hour upon hour of my mother's chairside patter. This was my day care, and it served me well. It was only later, when I was perhaps 10 or 12, that I began to regret my mother's occupation, and resent its many demands on her time and energy. In the 1960s most women with children were stay-at-home mothers while mine was working hard to build a business. With the child's intense desire to be no different from anyone else, I wanted her baking cookies at home, knitting sweaters, leading Girl Scout troops.

Later, as an ardent young feminist, I regretted her profession for different reasons. What were I and my idealistic, liberated, cosmetic-free friends to make of all this concern with hair dyes and perms, polish, hot oil treatments, eyebrow plucking, and countless other products and services designed to make women other than they were? How could my mother, a smart, spiritually-minded woman with a lot of good sense, tolerate a lifetime's occupation with such superficiality? My mother's job then seemed like a political case in point, a cautionary parable for women's rights.

Home visiting during college, and later graduate school, I entered my mother's shop as a returning hero. "Here's my Jo," she'd say to whomever happened to be in her chair, as if announcing the arrival of a visiting celebrity. The customer would smile understandingly, I sheepishly, and I'd plop down in the nearest empty hydraulic to regale her with tales of an endlessly fascinating distant place called "The University" she had never been fortunate to attend.

I played my part. I was supported by her immense energy, and by her innate understanding of prosperity and how it comes. I blossomed and grew in the light of her pride. But I was a long time in understanding the real gift she'd given, not just to me and my siblings, but to everyone who opened the door of her shop.

It took me years to realize that my mother actually enjoyed the "beauty business," as she always called it. After her death in 1990, I wondered even more, when I thought back on the 6-day workweeks, the endless hours with her hands in other people's hair, the aching feet, the toxic fumes and solutions, and the same idle conversation with the same customers for 10-20 years—surely this wasn't the life she'd dreamed of?

As hard as it was for me to fathom, this life was my mother's calling. And superficial it was not. For what her customers really came for—and what my mother dispensed freely for more than a quarter-century—wasn't just to have their hair colored and curled. It was to have their spirits lifted, their real, inner beauty acknowledged and celebrated, and to go home feeling better about themselves than they did coming in.

Thirty-five years later, I still remember their names. My mother's customers. There was old Mrs. Swikhart—one of the "blue ladies," as I called them for the slightly blue cast to their tinted gray hair—whom for some 8 to 10 years my mother picked up for her weekly hair appointment, leaving her own shop in the middle of the day for no extra charge.

There was Mrs. Schweitzer, who had cancer, and whose hair Mom did until her death. My mother did many a hairstyle in somebody's kitchen, bathroom, nursing home room, even funeral home. She didn't believe in refusing service because of personal inconvenience or discomfort. Wherever the location, whatever the condition of her customer, her job was to do whatever she could to make them look their best.

There was Mrs. Johnson, with a mass of brown-gray hair she could sit on. No one but my mother would touch it. It was too long, too heavy, too time-consuming, too hard. But Mom knew it wasn't the hairstyle that mattered. It was the simple act of lifting the weight of that hair up off her neck, if only for an hour. So every week, with the patience of a master weaver, my mother washed, wound, and twisted that hair up onto Mrs. Johnson's head into what looked like a crown.

The operators my mother employed over the years offered their own ministerial challenges. There was a seemingly endless parade of young women in and out of Danielle. Turn-over was thick and fast—Judy, Mary, and Barb, followed by Vicky, Jesse, Kathy, Connie, Jo, and Elaine—all fresh out of beauty school, giving bad cuts and worse advice. My mother's spirit was tested and strengthened by these fresh-faced, fast-talking young women—and given much to forgive. Fake appointments in the book for unsanctioned break time, no appointments written down and money pocketed without record, clandestine haircuts and sets going on in home basements for lower rates. She caught, corrected and forgave them all. She embraced them all as her girls.

Brenda, a sweet, insecure young woman with a small son, and an inconceivable love for an abusive husband, was one of her most memorable trials. Once, when Brenda called my mother to tell her she'd left Gary for good and didn't know what to do, Mom put her up in the apartment over the shop without charge, just until she "got back on her feet." A few weeks later, when Mom discovered Gary had moved in as well, the free housing arrangement was terminated. Brenda's employment, though, went on for a long time after. For operators and customers alike, the shop was a small galaxy of human falterings and overcomings.

Yes, my mother was in the beauty business, but it wasn't a beauty of hair, nails or skin. It was a beauty of the spirit. Some may do their ministry in churches or temples, put on vestments and use the sacraments of baptism, communion, and confirmation. My mother's vestment was her beautician's smock, the baptismal font her shampoo bowl, her sacred implements comb, scissors, and brush, her confessional the sacred space of her hydraulic chair and the attitude of compassion, tolerance, and discretion she maintained while listening quietly behind it.

My mother heard a million sad stories, laughed at a million jokes, sympathized with a million aches and complaints. Oh, the countless husbands analyzed, criticized, and forgiven. The countless children agonized over. The confidences disclosed. The recipes exchanged. The relentless signs of aging fretted over and beaten back for another week. The victories won over personal irrelevance and everyday despair.

This was the sacred mission my mother rose to each day. To be present to everyone who entered her door. To touch each one gently and respectfully, stroking hair and brow, teasing, combing, coaxing out their own natural luster and light, and when she was done, to hand them a mirror, spin them around in their chairs, and join them in appreciating the rare beauty in the mirror before them. "Look now," she'd say, "don't you look nice?"

This was my mother's ministry. Danielle Beauty Salon was her church. The tending, caring, and accepting she practiced daily were the legacy she left behind. My mind reels at the influence of a single ordinary, beautiful life, and at the peculiar human blindness that fails to see the very grace that holds us up, the arms that steady and propel us gently from behind, the presence ever standing by listening, listening . . .

In her 25 years in the beauty business, how many souls did my mother stroke, brush, and gentle into peace?

I write. I teach. I pray. I hope to touch even one life with an equal grace.