I tried a new hair conditioner a week and a half ago that promised to leave my hair smooth and sleek, soft and shiny.

It didn’t.

It left my hair looking like I’d rubbed a couple tablespoons of Crisco into it and left it there.  It took me eight days and five kinds of shampoo, plus a sad little session with a bar of Irish Spring, to get it out.

My hair hasn’t been smooth and sleek in a long time.  It used to be, but with age, alas, comes a coarser, wirier texture that rarely even looks brushed, much less soft and shiny.  Nobody warns you about this, by the way.  They warn you about all kinds of things that come with age, but not that one.

So I’m perpetually in search of a product that will give me the hair I used to have.  The kind of hair that prompted people to tell me I should be doing hair product commercials on TV.  The kind of hair that strangers in the grocery store would reach out and touch.

That hair is long gone.  And it seems like the older I get, the more badly I want it back.

Come to think of it, I’d like the body back, too, and the face as well.  I don’t feel any different on the inside from the person I was when I was twenty-one, so why should the outside look different?  It’s a fresh shock every time I look in a mirror.  And photographs are even worse.  It was a couple of years ago that I saw a picture of a woman in my house and thought—Who is that lady?  I literally had no idea who she was.  And then I realized it was me.

That really happened.  Terrible picture.  And no, you don’t get to see it.

I looked at that picture and thought, Oh crap, I’m old!  When did that happen?

(I suspect if you’re older than I am, you’re laughing at me.  “Old” is always twenty years older than you currently are.  But I know you’ve worn these shoes.  You know exactly what I’m talking about here.)

Many of us spend a lot of time lamenting the passing of our “best years” and wishing we still looked like we used to.

But wait.

I am not the person I was when I was twenty-one.  My sense of self is no different, which is why I don’t feel any different—but I’m not the same person.

At twenty-one, I hadn’t been to college yet.  I certainly hadn’t started teaching yet.  I hadn’t even had any kids yet.  I was still living in the same house my mother bought when I was six, and I had no idea in the world that I would one day wind up living in Wisconsin or that I’d be so happily married to the man who shares my life today.

I had not, in fact, done or said or thought or seen any of the things I’ve done and said and thought and seen in the past thirty-plus years.  I’ve done a lot of living in those years.  A lot of laughing, and a lot of crying, too.  That’s three-fifths of my life.  And I want to erase them?

I had young hair, a young face, and a young body, yes, but also a young heart and a young mind and a young soul.  And I don’t mean those last ones in a good way.  I mean immature, inexperienced, untested, and at times, downright foolish.

Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young.

And you know what?  I don’t want to erase those years.  I don’t want to be that person again.  So why would I want to look like her?

I don’t.  Not really.  To try to recapture the girl I was thirty-some years ago would be to try to turn back time.  Stop the clock.  And if you stop the clock, you don’t move forward—you stand still.

And meanwhile, everyone else is still moving forward, and you’re going to be left behind.

I don’t want to be left behind.  I just want to find a good conditioner.

Because even though I now realize that these are the best years, and even though I don’t want to be that girl again, I do still want her hair.