The clients come and go, like lovers. Some seem to like me very much, but then they go away and don’t come back. Others, I can tell, don’t like me at all, and yet they stay and stay and stay. And some I detest, I abhor, I don’t want to spend another minute in their presence, but I am paid to be kind and attentive. I drench them with my sweetness, speak to them in honey-tones so thick my tongue can barely move, count the moments until they leave, and then they do leave, but not until they have pre-booked their next appointment. Clients- like lovers- are a breed I do not yet understand.

But every once in awhile, everything goes just as it should. Yesterday a woman made an appointment to have her hair shampooed and styled. I am used to these women. They require tenderness, someone to be gentle with them and make them feel like they are still a whole person, even though it’s difficult for them to walk up the stairs to the salon. Even though they can’t wash their hair on their own anymore. I have learned to silently place my arm just underneath their elbow as they ease themselves into my chair, making it seem like a natural part of the appointment rather than a spotlight on their unsteady feet. I’ve learned to offer tea or water to ease the dryness in their mouths, and I’ve learned to ask questions that matter to them: their garden, their family, their troublesome hip. I like seeing these women because it feels like the completion of a circle; these are mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers who need- in a gradual reversal of roles- to have someone wash and love and coo over them. I don’t mind being that person.

The woman who came in yesterday was incredibly frail. She couldn’t climb the stairs at all so I walked with her around the side of the building to the second-floor entrance, and as we made our slow, shuffling way along the sidewalk, she asked if I wouldn’t mind holding her hand. Her nails were long and perfectly rounded. Inside, she dropped heavily into my chair and I gave her a glass of cool water so she could breathe again. I fastened the drape around her neck and we chatted quietly until she had recovered enough to walk over to the shampoo bowl. She told me her skin wasn’t as young as it used to be, and as my hands worked the lather over her red and bumpy scalp I said a silent prayer of thanks that God made me into the kind of person who isn’t bothered by that sort of thing. Young skin isn’t the only kind of skin that needs to be touched. While I was rinsing her hair an ambulance screamed by on a nearby road and she winced. “I hate hearing that sound,” she said.

When she felt beautiful again I removed her drape and walked with her back around the building, then helped her get settled in the front seat of her car. She thanked me, and I knew I was loved. Everything felt complete, then. It’s like a child with a music box; the child wants desperately to hear the music play, and the music box yearns to sing. The child turns the key, the music begins, and a perfect moment has been created.