Lemon Tree Queen

Lemon Tree Value Salon

Dear Starlight, 

My mother once told me her forties were her favorite decade. She said it was the time in her life when she felt most free, most strong, and most herself. She has told me many things that are her favorites that are far from my own. Yet, "bests" are adding up in my forties.

One best happened Thursday at 6:15pm. I zipped into Lemon Tree to get a $25 haircut, wash, and scalp massage, all done in under fifteen minutes. Lemon Tree is a value unisex salon similar to Supercuts. You can find the small unassuming unattractive hair-box shops in suburban sprawl, floating in asphalt and not too far from a grocery store or Walmart.

This was not my first visit; it was my second in the last three months. I have a blunt bob. I like it straight and a specific length floating somewhere between my neck and ears.  It requires bi-monthly maintenance, which goes unnoticed by anyone other than me.

That fluffy 80's bob...

Over the years, my haircuts have started creeping up in price and length of time in the chair. Alongside this, my anxiety started creeping up with high-stakes disappointment potential. Things had changed. The possibility that the hairdresser simply couldn’t resist trendy razor whisps is really real, my irritability being chairbound and talking for too long is too much for my introverted self, and the cost, the cost, the cost. My solution was a standstill, and my hair grew past the length I most enjoyed.

Haircuts can be life-changing experiences, both good and bad. I've lived through both. There is no doubt that magic and alchemy occurs between shearing hair and shimmering golds and reds woven into locks. Watch out for a woman feeling beautiful, I mean, goddesses are known to emerge from a good shag. In fact, I credit my move upstate and my first home purchase to one of those epic almost euphoric haircut and color sessions that took place in the Lower East Side and went all day. I left that appointment ravenously hungry and convinced I could buy a house and leave NYC. That night, circa 2002, at the suggestion of my hairdresser, I, a little twenty-five-year-old me feeling super-powered by a good blonding experience, looked in the New York Times for properties upstate, and the next day, I was on a train and found my first home in Hudson, NY. (My house I bought on a credit card, which is another story!)

But now, instead of spending three hours in the salon and $300 out of pocket, I want two hours and forty-five minutes more time to roam the woods with $275 more buckaroos in my pocket for ice cream. Chocolate, always (I’ve become very vanilla). The thing is, before me now, I might not have felt my truth to be correct. I would’ve felt ashamed about a $25 haircut. Someone inside me would have said, "That's not a good haircut; that's a cheap haircut." 

When I left Lemon Tree Thursday, I considered what was a good haircut and whether the less expensive haircut was better or vice versa. I realized they were both good haircuts but wildly different experiences, and the price did not necessarily affect whether they were good or not. What was most important was simply knowing what was right for me and trusting that as being my values. Walking out of Lemon Tree hot and forty-something into the breezy summer evening, happy with my $25 haircut, felt the best!

Friday, I woke up with a noticeably longer left side bob. I will get to it four-weeks from now when I walk in for my next $25 trim. This is not a four-star Lemon Tree review. In fact, beautiful baes with your gorgeous fairytale hair, take this letter as a suggestion to keep doing you unapologetically. Be your kind of queen. Sit in whichever throne is most comfortable for you and trust your values.