This post is dedicated to Caryn
Jaetzold, who was both my & Jean’s hairdresser for decades. And a treasured friend. Caryn used to discourage me from highlights
when my hair turned mousy after the birth of my first son. “God has only made one mistake – you should
be a redhead.”
Almost
twenty seven years ago, when I was living in DC & home for a visit, Caryn
agreed to take care of my hair, after hours.
I took two bottles of champagne.
The
next day, I woke up a redhead. Complete
with eyebrows.
Caryn
should know that many people in my life now only know me as a redhead –
including my youngest son. And that one
day a few years ago, as I was working our local voting site during a crucial
city election, one of the volunteers distributed sun screen & said to me:
This is really
important for you, with that skin & red hair.
I laughed & as I lathered on
sunscreen, I responded:
The pale skin & freckles are natural – the hair is
Preference by Loreal 7LA.
And Caryn, our friend Jayne
Pride commented: I did not know that.
All of that is not the subject
of this post. But I wanted to introduce
Caryn. She is amazing & her talents &
passions are not limited to choosing the right color for a skin type.
This particular post is about
something Caryn shared on Facebook.
About Kris Kristofferson.
And I told Caryn I had a story
about Kristofferson.
I am not sure when Kristofferson
came under my radar. It might have been
when my cousin Suzanne Willimon Borgese took her baby sister Laura Newsom &
I to see “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea”.
Eventually, before
the Internet, I learned that Kris Kristofferson was not only from Texas, but a
Rhodes Scholar & a song writer. A
man who had a BA & Masters in Literature, who went to the Army’s Ranger
school, & wrote songs.
And what songs he wrote – the
best were recorded by the best: Sunday
Morning Coming Down, Help Me Make It through the Night, Once More with Feeling,
For the Good Times, Me & Bobby McGee. And so many more.
Over forty years ago, I lost my
young & too unformed mind & got married. My husband became a Christian (at my urging)
& eventually, after we settled on a church (South Main Baptist here in
Houston), he decided after a few years that we should take training classes to
become Sunday School teachers.
Now, my friends, I was not then,
nor am I now, a suitable candidate to teach Sunday School. Because we were young, we ended up teaching
15 year olds – in separate classes. I
taught girls, he taught boys.
During that ill-advised teaching
episode & equally ill-advised marriage, Kris Kristofferson did a remake of
the Judy Garland classic “A Star is Born” with Barbra Streisand. The girls in my Sunday School class were
beside themselves. They all saw the
movie, more than once. And each of them
fell in love with Kris Kristofferson.
So I planned a field trip – I
would take them to a Kristofferson concert held in what was once the Summit
(home of the Houston Rockets) & now Lakewood Church.
We went to the concert – Willie
Nelson came out at the end for a duet.
I
dealt with the girls’ reaction to a
smoke filled arena that was less about tobacco than marijuana.
After the concert, on the way to
take them home, they were uncharacteristically very quiet. So I asked, Did you like the concert?
They all maintained they
did. But one of them said what they were
all thinking, because for them, Kris Kristofferson was John Norman Howard, the
self-destructive & tragic male lead of a movie.
Jaki, he sings
country.
I tried, in my twenty something
way to explain that Kristofferson was not John Norman Howard, but a songwriter,
a very interesting man with a difficult past.
That he was not the character he
played in the movie.
I am quite certain that they did
not get it. As I said, I was too young
to deal with a group of five fifteen-year-olds.
Although my Sunday School lesson
on birth control became legendary.
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