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MARGARITA "MOURKA" MEYENDORF:
Author, Actress & Musician
Author, Actress & Musician
Silver Lining
At sixteen, tired of the Russian immigrant look with my hair pulled back into a thick chestnut-colored braid below my waist, I braved a visit to a local hairdresser and asked her to lop my braid off. I was finished with the hair combing struggles and hours of washing and drying hair, and I wanted something modern, hip.
The instant the braid fell on the floor, my hair splayed out into a thousand directions, and I looked like a scarecrow. Little did I know that I had exchanged hours of combing struggles for a new world of large pink spongy curlers, bobby-pins, and hairspray.
When I got home and showed my Russian parents the cut braid, which looked like a long dead brownish-colored animal, they went into shock. They didn’t recognize me.
Now, almost a half-century later, I have a braid again.
In March of 2020, the sudden horror of COVID-19, forced the world to shut down. The fear of dying alone in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors and nurses in astronaut suits kept me home. Left to my own devices to keep anxiety and fear at bay, I busied myself with Zoom yoga classes, Luigi’s Jazz dance class in my living room, Duolingo Spanish, walks every day for fresh air, and like the queen in the Snow-White fairytale, I watched myself change in the mirror.
In the last decade, a few of my chemically enhanced brunette and redhead friends stopped dying their hair and let it grow out – grey. Not me. Every month, I kept my appointments at my chic hair salon RAGE and paid my hairdresser a small fortune to keep my hair a vibrant and sexy-looking auburn-blonde color. When my friends suggested I might be happier “going natural,” I would say: “I’m not ready.” Growing old gracefully was not my long suit.
But at 72, during COVID, the panic time button was hitting on my hair, changing that beautiful auburn-blonde color to a mousy grey. Beauty salons like many other businesses were deemed dangerous for “community spread of COVID” and Rage shut down along with my expensive “cut and color” package.
The instant the braid fell on the floor, my hair splayed out into a thousand directions, and I looked like a scarecrow. Little did I know that I had exchanged hours of combing struggles for a new world of large pink spongy curlers, bobby-pins, and hairspray.
When I got home and showed my Russian parents the cut braid, which looked like a long dead brownish-colored animal, they went into shock. They didn’t recognize me.
Now, almost a half-century later, I have a braid again.
In March of 2020, the sudden horror of COVID-19, forced the world to shut down. The fear of dying alone in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors and nurses in astronaut suits kept me home. Left to my own devices to keep anxiety and fear at bay, I busied myself with Zoom yoga classes, Luigi’s Jazz dance class in my living room, Duolingo Spanish, walks every day for fresh air, and like the queen in the Snow-White fairytale, I watched myself change in the mirror.
In the last decade, a few of my chemically enhanced brunette and redhead friends stopped dying their hair and let it grow out – grey. Not me. Every month, I kept my appointments at my chic hair salon RAGE and paid my hairdresser a small fortune to keep my hair a vibrant and sexy-looking auburn-blonde color. When my friends suggested I might be happier “going natural,” I would say: “I’m not ready.” Growing old gracefully was not my long suit.
But at 72, during COVID, the panic time button was hitting on my hair, changing that beautiful auburn-blonde color to a mousy grey. Beauty salons like many other businesses were deemed dangerous for “community spread of COVID” and Rage shut down along with my expensive “cut and color” package.
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Would the skunk line on the top of my head be getting greyer by the day? What was I going to look like on screen during my Zoom yoga classes? Should I put make up on at 8:30 in the morning? When this quarantine is over, would people recognize me? Would I emerge from this pandemic an old woman? My husband was already beginning to look like a Hasidic Jew with his long grey curly sideburns, and my colorless eyebrows were disappearing.
To make matters worse, day-by-day, when I combed my hair, I looked more like my otherwise pretty mother with her mousy-grey hair pulled back from her face with small plastic combs. Was I ready for that? I began weaving what’s left of the color segments into a braid and wearing scarves. With a scarf, I looked like a cross between a “babushka” (Russian for grandmother) and an aging gypsy. Social life was non-existent, and I started dressing up to take the garbage out. The few times it was necessary for me to enter a store, I felt like a character in a science fiction horror film – long grey hair, sunglasses, plastic gloves and a mask over my nose and mouth. |
Margarita Meyendorff
Photo Courtesy: Margarita Meyendorff |
COVID dragged on for weeks, months, years. The world experienced much illness, pain, loneliness, depression, and anxiety. And then – a miracle. COVID abated, the world became less fearful, life resumed with a changed normalcy, and I loosened my thick grey braid and looked in the mirror. A welcoming surprise – my hair was silvery-white, soft-white, and naturally wavy.
COVID quarantine had given me a silver lining – a much more peaceful and accepting sense of self as an elder with silvery white beautiful hair. No more salons, no more chemicals. I’m saving a fortune.
COVID quarantine had given me a silver lining – a much more peaceful and accepting sense of self as an elder with silvery white beautiful hair. No more salons, no more chemicals. I’m saving a fortune.
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Margarita "Mourka" Meyendorff is the author of Flipping the Bird and the published memoir DP: Displaced Person. The daughter of a Russian Baron, she was born displaced in a refugee camp in Germany, far from the opulence of Imperial Russia that was her birthright. A series of wars destroyed this privileged existence, and Margarita’s life became a series of extraordinary moves.
She has performed as an actress, dancer, musician, and storyteller at venues throughout the United States and in Europe. Her memoir, DP Displaced Person is being translated into Russian. Her recent book titled Flipping the Bird is an anthology of short stories based on her numerous life adventures. Follow Margarita on:
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