My Word! (Part II)

My ad hoc role continued with mum's hair. Peeking greys with surmountable audacity to call on my eye. A quarterly regime for mum and her azure box of DIY hair colour, framed with the familiar face of an attractive brunette, both waiting expectantly for me.

Calling on my sister - nobody did that - was homicidal backlash, and on my brother, it was as good as the question could get: Could you do mum's hair? ceased continuation. Sometimes, he concluded with a trail of feigned merry singsong and the odd fart to further prove his point.

A few weeks ago, my siblings were all housed in the living room. They orbited mum and I when my hands started to work on her hair; using cheap plastic gloves which chafed my crinkly palms. The appendage, a mini hairbrush which was attached to the bottle of hair colour was as useful as forking melted butter.

The brother snickered and did countless monologues. Incoherent and wilful, in words and actions. His irreverent take on middle-aged woman's coiffure extended to the fungal shape -rotundly convexed - of mushrooms. Mum heard him but she couldn't care less as I worked on a new section of greying patc.

The sister remarked that my colouring skills was exquisitely painful to watch. It burlesqued my dad's dogged grace; to remove his recalcitrant bunion with a dainty clipper. Mum looked on without a word, probably on a prairie bemoaning why she couldn't look as chic as women with salt and pepper hair, like Diane Keaton. Or, our next door neighbour, who didn't look like Diane Keaton, but who had the self-assurance not to do something to her greying crown. Mum had the self-assurance too, but she just needed a little bit more, like hair paint.