With the offer in her hand, she realised she possibly could do with a slight trim even a bit of layering and maybe cut her fringe again, after all it had been nearly three years since she last had her ends trimmed and her fringe cut half an inch above her wide and ever so slightly bushy eyebrows, it changed her look somewhat, but was easier to manage, by now if pulled forward, it reached down to near her breasts. A close friend Marrieta had only recently, in sweltering January, asked if she’d ever cut her hair short, “NEVER" she’d loudly chortled remembering her childhood days from as far as she could go back, and in family photo’s, at first Em and Zachary her older brother had their hair cropped extremely close, supposedly ‘to help it grow thick’ was the old wives tale Mama told, it had seemed to work for Em’s family who all had strong, medium thick hair with no traces of baldness anywhere. Later from kindergarten right up to year twelve and her school leavers, her hair was kept in a very short pudding bowl cut,’ The Classique style’ where the back and sides were cut nay nearly shaved very short in a taper by her Papa with his old Berman hand shears and scissors over comb technique (from his early days, along with his childhood sweetheart- who later became Mama- helping his Papa at the family barbershop in their hometown in Tuscany, Italy).These later haircuts were possibly a move to ward off any predatory pimply, boys (or girls in Zach’s case) she didn’t know but wasn’t worried, her parents only did what was best for her and Zach who still to this day at forty years of age sported a crew-cut, (again originally done by Papa like his own ,which Mama cut, she herself had long wavy golden hair with family photo’s of the same bowl cut in her youth, like Em’s). She did remember though that her hair was curlier then and with her ever present freckles (even now) people always remarked how handsome or pretty the Calavetti kids always looked. She’d known Mart since the end of high school when just before her eighteenth birthday Jilly and the boys moved into the neighbourhood and started attending their church, her short hair hadn’t put Martin Brakeridge off, in fact quite the opposite, she’d said if he liked it, she’d keep it that way, but after their marriage, five years later and a few more of Papa’s and then Mama’s haircuts, (which were a fair bit shorter than her Pop’s although both still very professional looking) she got, a wildish streak in her and started growing it, only relenting during her pregnancy with the twins and during the hot months until they were four months old when it was back to Mama’s bowl cuts. Since then, apart from a very occasional trim of the ends and two short fringe cuts, it just grew and grew and grew ‘til now after over fourteen years.
