I was 14. My mom was 37.

Which is funny, because 37 seemed impossibly grown up back then. Ancient, even. Now I look at pictures of her from that year and realize she was just…me. A woman trying to make the best of life, hoping to look pretty, hoping tomorrow might hold something good.

My mom was raising me alone in the 1980s, working late nights bartending and stretching every paycheck like it was made of rubber. She didn’t have salon money.

She had determination.

And one fateful evening, she came home with two little cardboard boxes that should have never occupied the same grocery bag.

An Ogilvie Home Perm.

And a box of DARK brown hair color.

These things should never be applied on the same night.

Perhaps not in the same month.

But this was the ’80s. We believed in possibility.

She looked at me and said, “Want to help?”

Absolutely I did.

See, I desperately wanted my mom to find a boyfriend. A nice one. Maybe someone who drove a shiny Peterbilt like the lead singer of Alabama. Someone who’d take her dancing after work, buy her a strawberry daiquiri, and make her laugh the way she deserved.

Naturally, I assumed the first step toward true love was…a home perm.

We spread everything across the kitchen table like surgeons preparing for an operation.

Out came the bread bag.

Every family had one.

Ours held dozens of pink, gray, and peach perm rods that traveled faithfully between our house and my aunt’s. They’d build mullets for each other every few months.

It was practically a community service.

I’d watched my aunt wrap perms a hundred times, usually with a cigarette pinched between her lips so both hands stayed free. Smoke curled toward the ceiling while they rolled hair and talked about life.

I remember my aunt casually saying one afternoon, “I just wish your uncle’s fake eye didn’t look so real.”

Not that it looked fake.

That it looked too real.

The conversations were as unforgettable as the hairstyles.

That night, though, it was just Mom and me.

We built our very first mullet together.

Rod by rod.

Section by section.

Dream by dream.

The perm processed beautifully.

Then came the hair color.

Again…

This should never be done on the same night.

When my mom finally blow-dried her hair, we stood there in stunned silence.

Instead of soft curls, her hair resembled the delicate black lace wrapped around a marshmallow that had caught fire over a campfire.

It was crispy.

It was crunchy.

It was…architecturally fascinating.

She looked in the mirror.

I looked at her.

Neither of us spoke for a full minute.

Then she sighed.

“I think I need to fix this.”

Too embarrassed to leave the house herself, she handed me money and sent me to Walgreens with one mission.

Buy curl relaxer.

You remember the boxes.

The ones with people sporting magnificent Rick James-style Jheri curls that glistened under studio lights.

Those products were not designed with my very Caucasian mother in mind.

But desperate times.

The chemicals finished what the perm and color had started.

What emerged was a perfectly round, almost transparent Afro.

Not fluffy.

Not curly.

Just…chemically confused.

Hair snapped off if you looked at it too hard.

I’m fairly certain a piece floated away when the cat walked past.

It was, objectively, one of the worst hair disasters in Wisconsin history.

Back then, I laughed.

How could I not?

But now…

Now I’m 51.

Now I understand.

She wasn’t trying to be glamorous.

She wasn’t chasing youth.

She just wanted to feel pretty.

She wanted to finish a shift, wash off the smell of cigarette smoke and bar towels, meet her friends for a daiquiri, and maybe—just maybe—catch the eye of a good man.

She wanted what every woman wants.

To look in the mirror and like what she saw.

Isn’t that still true?

We buy the serum.

We try the new haircut.

We order the cream everyone swears by.

We wonder if bangs would make us look younger.

We debate Botox.

We color the gray.

We buy the shoes.

Sometimes we try all the things…all at once.

Sometimes it works.

Sometimes we accidentally build ourselves a metaphorical kitchen-table mullet.

I smile now when I think about that night.

Not because of the perm.

Or the hair color.

Or the chemically induced Afro.

I smile because my mom trusted me enough to help.

Because we stood in that tiny kitchen believing we could make life a little better with a bread bag full of perm rods and twenty dollars’ worth of optimism.

That’s the thing about women, isn’t it?

We keep hoping.

We keep trying.

We keep believing the next season might be the one where we finally feel beautiful, confident, seen.

And maybe that’s not vanity.

Maybe it’s hope.

I understand my mom now in ways I never could at fourteen.

I see the tired woman behind the crispy curls.

The brave woman behind the boxed dye.

The lonely woman behind the laughter.

And honestly…

I might just get a perm.