Well, it took over three hours but I have a new head and I'm very pleased with it. I asked for a student at Sassoon's (they have a school) because I wanted some time and attention and I got it. The student, Melina, was not a beginner. She works in a salon in Montreal and she took a course with Sassoon here in Toronto last year and came back for more. So she was already skilled and high motivated (her boss paid for the course). And the instructor, Paolo, was fantastic: gifted and attentive.

First, they cut off three years of an unwieldy length and I now have two hanks of hair to give to a cancer patient, have to find out where to take them. Then they chose a style; I received The Firefly. It's an interesting cut. Melina was careful and Paolo was meticulous , checking and setting the pattern at every layer she cut. Know what? I look better than the model in the style book, if you don't look at my face. She, of course, is younger and unwrinkled. But my hair has some natural curl to it so even after three years of being dragged down, it popped up into waves. I really do feel light-headed.

Isn't it delightful how something as ordinary as a haircut can lift your spirits and put spring in your walk? I was waiting for spring and now it's here. Aldous Huxley once said that man's hope is his capacity for irrelevance. Woman's, too. What could possibly be more irrelevant than a new arrangement of hair? It works for me.

I am so grateful to Melin and Paolo.

I am going to have my hair cut off today. All of it, well, no, not shaved, but off. I haven't had it cut for almost three years and even then it was long and I just had a trim. It's down my back now and I can wear a single braid over my shoulder, but I never mastered the skill of a French braid, and I guess now I never will. I made the appointment a week ago so I've had time to think about it and get used to the idea. Soon I will be light-headed.

People have been quite tactful about my hair, so tactful I can tell they don't like it. One daughter simply asked what I planned to do with my hair at a time when I didn't have a plan. When one person, whom I hadn't seen in several years, exclaimed at it, I said "I'm channelling my grandmother," as if that explained it. I guess it did. My Icelandic grandmother never cut her hair as far as I know. She had marvellous thick, glossy, chestnut-coloured hair with a wing of silver in it for a long time before she went white. I guess I wanted to see if my hair would still grow; I know some people whose hair will not grow past a certain length.

Years ago, when my husband went into the theatre business, he grew a beard so the actors would be more accepting of him, he hoped. I thought he looked great and my face gradually developed some resistance to the bristle. Our minister's wife refused to sit beside us at church because she thought he look too maverick, too bohemian for that staid community. He asked me then if I thought he should shave it off. "It's not for me to say," I replied. "You'll know when the time comes." And one morning he knew, and shaved.

So with my hair. Last week I knew, and made the appointment. Isn't it nice when a decision comes to you, ready-made and certain? That doesn't happen often.