A dear cousin recently suggested I rerun this column; I had to oblige.
Chatterbox once talked about young people committing their lives to love, marriage and a baby carriage. We talked about why young people would put their priceless, healthiest, most fit and beautiful years aside to do something as hard as creating a family. Raising kids is, after all, the end of our life as carefree adults. Wonderful, yes, but self-denial and sacrifice become the order of the day. It’s fulfilling around all universes and back, but with exhausting, constant and complete responsibility interrupted by only rare, brief, reprieve.
Still, sooner or later, most young people take that plunge into parenthood but the “sooner” and “later” have very different implications. Let’s use a haircut analogy. Yes, haircut. Even those of us who don’t remember them firsthand, most of us have seen pictures of two famous haircuts from two different decades. Each had a distinctive feature which can be applied to life.
Back in the ’80s, there was a very popular haircut called the mullet. It was jokingly referred to as “business up front; party in the back.” Way back, in the ’50s, there was another popular style called the pompadour. It’s a safe guess that it was the antithesis of the mullet because it was very much, “party up front; business in the back.” Well, the commitment to the stuff in life that takes stamina, self-discipline and self-sacrifice is no different.
One cousin of mine and I have recurring discussions which made me realize just how these two trends in haircuts relate to life at large. We are contemporaries if there ever were any. Born four months apart, with our mothers being sisters as close as twins, we did everything together, from our first steps to high school graduation. Then, our paths individualized. I worked and married young. She took a career course, traveled, partied and married very late by 1970s standards.
As we started to face our silver years, she started to regret front-loading her life. She got married 14 years after I did; her children are now grown but the older of her two is younger than the youngest of my four. After several decades of conversations between us about where our life parallels ended, and which of us made the better decision, I had a realization and drew an analogy for her: my life was the mullet. Hers – the pompadour.
There are perks and bad hair days either way. Mullets get to travel after their kids leave the nest. Sure, it’s a risky proposition. Brittle bones make for tough luggage lifting, but the odds are in our favor. Mullet people usually end up having grandchildren while they can still pick them up. Really young mullets may have grandchildren they can roller blade with before old knees go south and the back follows.
Pompadours are more likely to travel when they’re young, whether spending lavishly or backpacking in the mountains. They can group-rent summer houses in the Hamptons and dance all night without needing ibuprofen (or oxygen). What they can’t do is stream pictures of Sweden home to adult children. Indeed, they may discover they’re working into their 70s to pay college tuition. They are older grandparents. Some marry younger spouses, delaying childbearing even further or delaying travel into their late years while they wait for their younger spouse to retire. Still, pompadours have those memories of their extended youth to hold onto, which mullets don’t.
The grass may look greener on the other side of the fence but, as someone once reminded me, we still have to mow. Still, now, during my friendly discussions with my “pompadour” cousin, her whining, pining, and doubt is quickly curtailed by my simply muttering of the name of the hairstyle of life each of us chose to be ours.
When mullets, who married and started a family young, and pompadours, who back-burnered the business side of life, compare notes, everyone realizes that there are perks either way, and, though the haircuts may be a blast from the past, even young people today make mullet and pompadour life choices.
Hindsight, for all of us, is 20/20 and that goes for anything. Hopefully, we end up happy with the results of our choices, and both styles will look great when we look at it from the back.
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