Cold Feet?!

Change does not come easily to the Matron.

For example, she once had a cinnamon raisin bagel with crunchy peanut butter for lunch- for five years! Occasionally she was pried from home to a restaurant, where she would order soup or salad (Bold! Two options!).

When she slips into a pair of shoes that are magical--height! arch! sultry edge!--she wears them or their identical counterpart until the soles wear through or heels break off. Then she tries to have them fixed.

She must sleep on the same side of the bed forever.

When the Matron was still in the Wee Lass stage of life, her family included a poodle. The Wee Lass understood she loved poodles. The Matron's main requirement for the recent acquisition of the new dog, Scruffy? Part poodle.

Matron subscribes to The Pioneer Press. This is a bad newspaper. One day it pretended to be a board game on the front page of one of its sections: move your finger here, then here, then trace the bug and you win! Hooray! Headlines tend toward the "Missing Cat Was Cancer Patient's Best Friend" sort. Still, the Matron subscribes to and reads this disaster. Just because she does and must continue to do so or she may disintegrate.

Tomorrow the Matron is getting her hair cut. For the past --hmmmm? --- millennium, John has clipped the pesky ends and that job's done.

But now the Matron's friends are pulling her aside and whispering true-friend things about texture, quality, and ten inch split ends. The Matron finds herself listening to these sweet nothings with a certain degree of acceptance.

She is tired of hair caught in car doors, front doors, purses, earrings, scarves, children, ovens, and necklaces. She is ready for some bounce and fluff--some verve to the stuff. And her hair has been exactly this--long and dead straight--for the past 20 years. Yes, you heard that: decades. Two.

The matron is ready for a change.

Even as she is clinging to walls in terror.

The appointment? Tomorrow, 10 a.m.