First published in the Tri Town Transcript Aug 4, 2017
By Esther C. Baird
I interrupt this regular scheduled column, which would have been a variation on the theme, “Moose the Puppy Who Eats Everything,” to draw your attention to this breaking news from Casa Baird. For the first time since we moved to Boxford in August of 2010, I cleaned out my bathroom vanity.
It was like an archeology dig and my vanity was King Tut’s tomb. The curse of this particular site was that for the most part, when I bought it I was 36 and now I’m 43. None of the products had solved the march of time.
Take for example the makeup situation that existed in my upper left drawer. Regular Readers may recall that I first wrote about buying grownup makeup in one of my earliest columns back in Beverly. That was over 10 years ago. But hey, good news! I still have all that same makeup!
Some things, such as 13 containers of Shroom Eyeshadow (yes, eyeshadow approximately the color of a mushroom, except with shimmer) only get better with time.
Most fungus does.
At least makeup had an obvious use, unlike the nearly full bottle of Dry Shampoo. My girlfriend, who owns a salon and is basically a celebrity, swore that I only had to spray this stuff on my hair. It would magically attach to the sweat and grime and, I guess, airlift it off my head like so many nano- drones. Early morning workout? No time to shower? No problem, spray, spray!
All I know is that when I used it, it was like weaponized honey. It left my hair neither dry, nor feeling shampooed, just sticky, and possibly mistaken for a bee hive.
Naturally, I had skin creams. I’ve moved on from the cheap stuff I used to buy at CVS that could corrode a penny, but I still had enough types of creams and gels and, fancy term alert, serums, to make a manatee have wrinkle-free skin . . . if they worked.
Most don’t. I hope that shock doesn’t ruin your day.
I mean, I don’t want to give away the ending, but when you buy a roller ball wand that oozes a “caffeine-floral hybrid of energy and zest” under your eyes, the best you can hope for is that the bees from your sticky hair don’t try to pollenate your face.
There were hair dryers and diffusers and . . . a flat iron. Our former babysitter turned grown up friend, explained this would change my life. She came over and deftly zipped one through my hair making it shiny and smooth and swingy. She told me it was, “on point,” which I believe means cool. And it was.
But when I tried to do it to myself I almost burnt the right side of my scalp completely off. Some things are best left to the millennials, if I want to be “on point” I’ll listen to Tom Ashbrook.
I tossed 95 percent of it. I kept my toothbrush. A select set of serums, I mean, creams. The hair dryer and my one standard brush. (Let’s not kid ourselves with that round brush nonsense, they are a one way ticket to a frizzy knotted disaster.)
Also I kept a 3-by-5 card.
I found the card wadded up with a bunch of price tags and receipts that had meandered their way into a backwater eddy of the vanity.
It said: “Mommy, I cut my toe and it was bleeding, so I had to get a bandaid from your drawer and that is why the lights are on. Goodnight. Love you.”
It’s basically Shakespeare, minus the iambic pentameter.
It was from my eldest daughter. The one who just turned 13. The one who is away for two weeks at adventure camp in Maine. The one who is taller than me by 4 inches. It’s from when she was old enough to know she needed a bandaid, but young enough to worry she best tell me if she was rooting around in my cabinet.
That note gets to stay. All the junk in my vanity promised to reverse time, but they can’t. But this little hand written note actually captured a moment in time. And it’s from a child who actually did change my life.
So it gets to stay. In the back. Far back, so as we return to our regularly scheduled summer, Moose can’t eat it.