The nursing home wants her to cut it, but she's worn it long since World War II. For a reason.
By LANE DeGREGORY
Published December 29, 2003
[Family photos]
Dorothea Camfield rarely let down her long hair. Here it hangs to her hips as she poses with her first child, my mother, on a Miami beach in 1942.
Dorothea modeled on calendars and in newspapers and magazines. In May 1947, Coca-Cola’s magazine, the Red Barrel, ran nine black-and-white photos of her, including four hairdos. This photo was taken at the soda fountain in the Red Cross Drug Department Store in Miami, where her husband worked.
During World War II, Dorothea didn’t see her husband, Arthur, for almost two years. Near the end of the war, she cut her long hair into what she thought was a “very fashionable” shoulder-length ‘do. She posed for a portrait with her new style and my mother in 1944.
By the time her second daughter was born, Dorothea’s hair had grown long enough to pull back in her traditional bun. Here she reads to Valerie, 2, (left) and my mom, Clarissa, 5 (right) in their Miami home in 1947.
Before she broke her hips, Dorothea loved to grow orchids and bromeliads. She crocheted lace tablecloths and danced in stiletto heels. Here, at a family wedding in 2002, she’s surrounded by her four children, from left: Gray, Valerie, Clarissa (my mom) and S.J.
Dorothea broke her hip in September just before her 86th birthday. Here, she celebrates her day in the nursing home. She tied a blue ribbon around her hair to match her new muumuu.
My grandmother's hair is long and thick, molten silver. It spills across her pillow, pools around her pale face.
If my grandmother could stand, her hair would brush the back of her knees.
But my grandmother - Nanny, I call her - can't move much anymore. She's 86. She has osteoporosis and arthritis and asthma. In September, she fell and broke her left hip. Two months later, she slipped and her right hip shattered.
Now she's stuck in a hospital bed in Brighton Gardens nursing home in Venice, losing weight and strength and hope.
She struggles to brush her hair.
When I visited Nanny this month, she was lying on her left side, trying to watch a basketball game on TV. She had pulled a purple muumuu over her hospital gown. She had painted her faded lips fiery red.
And she had finger-combed her hair into a loose ponytail, wound it with a powder-blue ribbon. Strands were tumbling loose in front of her bifocals. The ends were ratted into impossible tangles.
"I can't reach to do the bun anymore," she said. A mountain of hairpins lay useless on her bedside table. "And the nurses don't want to deal with it."
In the beginning, they tried. Aides spent hours brushing and combing, trying to tame Nanny's hair. They washed it and rinsed it and smoothed it straight. But Nanny gets weary when you wheel her into the shower. And draping her head over the sink for so long hurts.
"They want to cut it," she said, swallowing tears. "I won't let them. They can't cut my hair."
My grandmother's hair is legendary in my family. She has let it grow through four wars and four children, two dogs, nine cats, six grandchildren and two great-grandsons. In 60 years, she hasn't so much as trimmed it.
Now it's all she has left.
Mermaid-style
Her parents named her Dorothea Jordan. She grew up in New York, in the shadow of an older sister. Her hair was dark then, so black it looked blue.
She would twist the sides above her temples into smooth rolls and let the rest fall, like the Andrews Sisters. Or sweep it up in jeweled clips and combs. Piling her hair high made her look taller, she thought. She's barely 5 feet tall. She has always worn stilettos.
In 1937, when Dorothea was 20, her friends persuaded her to enter a beauty pageant. She pinned her hair up in shimmering waves. "But my swimsuit won it," she said. "Very risque, for back then."
She was crowned Miss Brooklyn, as she tells it, and went on to the state pageant. The girl who beat her for Miss New York became Miss America. "That made it easier to take," she said.
The next year, while vacationing in Miami, she met Arthur Gray Camfield. He was handsome and soft-spoken, and told her she was beautiful. He took her to a ball. He took her to the beach.
Miss Brooklyn became Mrs. Arthur G. Camfield. She moved to the swampy south of Miami, set up house in a city where she knew no one, where moss grew like ghostly tresses in the trees and lizards scuttled across her kitchen counters. Her husband ran the restaurant in the Red Cross Department Store and seldom got home before 10 p.m. She always had meat and potatoes waiting - the maid cooked them. And she was always wearing heels and stockings, her makeup and lipstick refreshed, her hair pinned back in a thick, glistening bun.
"At night, before bed, he'd sit beside me and we'd talk about our days and he'd brush my hair," she said. "Mermaid-style."
She had her first child, my mother, in 1942. Then Arthur shipped off to war. A Navy supply officer, he was sent to a base in Oakland, Calif. She didn't see him for almost two years.
"I thought, after all that time, he'd probably gotten tired of looking at the same old picture of me," she said. "I thought he'd want something new, an updated look."
So before he came home, she cut her hair.
"Not too short. Shoulder-length. Very fashionable," she said.
He hated it.
She promised she'd never cut it again.
High-gloss
She used to wrap her money into her bun so no one would steal it. Once, while traveling near Lake Okeechobee, she stepped out of the car and hit her head on the door frame.
"Her bun came undone and money started flying everywhere," my mom told me. "There'd been a big rain and all these $20 bills were just floating down the gutter. My sister and I were laughing and laughing. Mom was screaming, holding her hair."
Another time, Nanny was sitting in her kitchen, talking on the phone. She lit a cigarette and the lighter flared. "Her hair caught on fire. You could smell it in the next room," my mom said. "I ran into the kitchen and there she was, still chatting away, holding the phone in one hand, beating her burning hair with the other." Even then, she didn't trim it.
Through the '40s and '50s, my grandmother helped organize the Miss Universe pageant, served on a grand jury and modeled for local magazines. Her slim hips, ruby lips and high cheekbones helped sell Coca-Cola across the South. She swooped her dark hair over hoop earrings, braided it into slick coils. Everybody but the press called her Dot.
"One never knows what will be expected of one when one is President of a Junior Woman's Club as is Dorothy," said a May 1947 article from Coca-Cola's magazine, Red Barrel.
In nine black-and-white photos spread across five pages, my grandmother sported four hairdos. Every few hours during the shoot, she'd had to reshellac with Aqua Net. "Those were the days before air-conditioning," she said. "It was hard to keep your hair up in the Miami heat and humidity."
Playing dress-up
Nanny's house was the perfect place to play dress-up. Her closet was crammed with round hat boxes wrapped in gold cords and stacks of shoe boxes, all filled with high heels. Filmy scarves, satin blouses, real silk stockings with seams up the back.
Her three-tiered jewelry box cradled troves of twinkling earrings, beaded bracelets and gold bangles, cocktail rings, rhinestone chokers, looping strands of pearls.
Everything was faux. But the glitter was real.
When I was a girl, my grandmother used to brush my hair, mermaid-style, down my back. During the Dorothy Hamill craze of the late '70s, she gave me some grandmotherly advice. "Don't cut your hair, Honey," she said, her brown eyes serious for once.
"Men love long hair."
My grandfather, who still loved hers, died of a stroke in 1977.
That's when my grandmother started losing herself.
Little pieces, at first: She dropped off the museum committee. She stopped going to garden club. Her daughters were grown by then, but her two sons were still teenagers. They needed her full time, she said.
While the boys were in college, my grandmother sold her diamond engagement ring, her only real gem, to keep up with the tuition. She bought a cubic zirconia replacement at Kmart.
Three years later, Miami's property values had soared so much that my grandmother couldn't afford the taxes on her three-bedroom home. She sold it and moved into an apartment. She gave her oldest son her car.
From that point on, no one called her Dot. She was no longer the vibrant Miami socialite. She was Mom, Mrs. Camfield, Grandmom, Nanny. Never fully herself, not even in name.
She kept up appearances, though. She dressed every day in stockings and heels. She manicured her long nails. Her makeup always was just so. She always smelled like department store perfume. Every morning, she piled up her hair. Every evening, she let it tumble down. And she brushed it, at least 100 strokes a night. She had to brush it herself now that she went to bed alone.
The price of beauty
Until three years ago, until my grandmother was 83, she dyed her hair jet black. Then she fell in her closet and broke her back.
Silver started seeping in. And other pieces of herself began shearing off, like shingles in a storm.
Her arms grew weak. She had trouble feeding herself and brushing her teeth. She couldn't do the zippers and buttons on her dresses. Couldn't work the clasps on her jewelry.
For Christmas that year, her youngest son bought her Reeboks. "Stylin' sneakers," I told her. But after 65 years of wearing spike heels, my grandmother's calf tendons had shortened. She couldn't put her feet down flat.
"Small price to pay for chorus girl legs," she said.
So she lost her shoes, her jewelry and her clothes. Then they took her teeth. She won't let anyone see her without her dentures.
All she had left were perfectly filed pink fingernails. And her hair.
Fake smiles and ugly stockings
The nurses have placed a bedpan on the rolling table in my grandmother's room so she won't try to get up. She uses a bendable straw to drink water so she won't smear her lipstick. Next to the bed she keeps a makeup kit, a hand mirror, clips and the hairpins she can't use.
No one sees her except nurses and family.
Still, she wears that happy muumuu over the drab hospital gown, puts eye shadow beneath her bifocals, keeps a fake smile cemented with Fixodent.
Every morning, she scoops up her hair at the temples and wrestles it into a rubber band. Her ponytail trails off her pillow like a pewter rope.
My grandmother suffers through endless hours of TV, flipping catalog pages filled with clothes she'll never wear. She tries to pass the time without letting herself linger in the present. It's hard.
She despises - that's the word she used - the orthopedic stockings they make her wear. They're supposed to subdue the swelling in her legs. But they're tight and they hurt. "And they're so ugly," she complained to me. She started scratching at the elastic hose, her manicure tearing at her fragile skin.
So a couple of weeks ago, an aide cut her nails. "This place," my grandmother grumbled. "You've got to get me out of this place."
After therapy, after Jeopardy, my grandmother kept painting her short, chopped-off nails. Coral pink and scarlet, a different hue to match each muumuu.
Then my mom broke more bad news. "The polish has to go," she said. Apparently nail polish skews blood oxygen-level readings. The nurses have to monitor how well my grandmother is breathing.
So her manicured days are over.
It won't be long
That leaves her hair. My mom and I brought sacks of salon tools to the nursing home: special shampoos and cream rinses, spray-on detanglers and a wide-toothed comb. An extra-wide Aveda paddle brush, guaranteed to unravel the toughest knots.
We bent over the bed rails and tried to brush out her hair. We could tell we were hurting her. She set her jaw and thanked us.
"But why?" my mom finally asked, exhausted. "It would be so much easier on all of us if we just cut your hair. Everyone else your age let it go long ago. Why do you keep insisting on holding on?"
"Because," my grandmother said. She sat up a little straighter. Her milky brown eyes narrowed beneath her bifocals. "I told you already," she said. "I promised Arthur."
My mom looked at me knowingly. She is convinced my grandmother is losing more than her strength. She smiled down at Nanny's gray halo and said, very sweetly, "But Mom, Dad's been gone for 26 years."
My grandmother snapped. "Don't you think I know that?" Then she sank back in her pillow, her face as pale as the sheets. "I know Arthur's gone," she whispered. She pulled her ponytail across her shoulder, as if to protect it. She closed her eyes.
"But I'm going to see him soon."
And when you do, Dot, he'll see your hair. He'll see you kept your promise all these long years.
