I saw some sponge curlers in the store – blue, green, yellow and pink. Ahhh, I just imagined my littlest granddaughter would like to have her big sister curl her hair. When I handed her the bag of curlers, she knew exactly what they were and what to do with them. She was excited to have her sister curl her hair and more excited when her hair bounced with curls. Cute as a bug, she was!
Mama behind cake
Mama’s wanna-be-curls on left
That triggered the memory of when I first started helping my Mother with her hair. At first it was just putting gook on her wanna-be-curls. Later, I also rolled the hair on the back of her head because it was hard for her to reach.
My mother’s hair was limp, lifeless, and “straight as a poker.” She was jealous of anyone whose hair was wavy or curly. She told me more than once that she wished her hair had body and could hold a curl like my hair. If she curled her hair on regular rollers, it would be flat again in no time at all. It wouldn’t hold a curl at all. She remedied that with a Toni perm.
She opened the pink box, laid out the permanent rods, pack of end papers and the two bottles of solution. I remember her first calling me to help when I was just five years old. I don’t know why she chose the youngest of her kids to help, especially a five-year-old. Maybe it was when the other kids were in school, but it seems she got me to help her even when the older girls were around.
She got her Rat Tail comb, parted her hair into sections, each twisted and secured with bobby pins. Each section was parted one little piece at a time, combed carefully, the ends wrapped in little papers (that looked like my Granddad’s cigarette rolling papers) and rolled onto the curling rods. That’s when I was called to duty. Mama sat in a chair, wrapped a towel around her shoulders and waited for me squeeze the solution onto the hair rolled on the rods. My favorite part was snipping off the tip of the nozzle of the thin plastic Permanent Wave Solution bottle. I turned the bottle upside down and squeezed out some of the liquid, letting the tip of the bottle scrape along the top of each curler. I repeated the process until all the solution was used. The last few curls got an extra squirt. What an awful smell! It was almost as bad as the nose-hair-burning odor of sulfur. Just thinking about it opens my sinuses.
After waiting about five minutes, she rinsed her hair and patted it with a towel. The towel rested on her shoulders again while I administered the second solution, the neutralizer. After another five minutes, she rinsed her hair again. Then the curlers came out. Rods were cast to one side to be rinsed and sorted, the wet papers to the other. All evidence was destroyed except for the awful smell of permanent solution that lingered in the house all day.
new sponge curlers 
bouncy curls