Marjorie was born with dark, curly hair. Very curly hair. This is both a blessing and a problem. She gets up in the morning looking like she did when she laid down. She has never had a perm because her hair is permanently curled to perfection. When she wants to go out into public, she puts her head under the running water in the kitchen sink, combs it, and voila, she's beautiful. She doesn't even have to use a hair dryer. Every hair is exposed to the air, so in minutes her hair is dry and she's ready to go.

Her hair is gray now and much shorter than when she was younger. Her long, curly hair required a lot of attention. I believe that her mother ironed it. Marjorie even learned how to iron it herself when her mother wasn't around.

Marjorie's mother bought her some very large curlers to help straighten her hair, but the curlers weren't large enough. From the curlers Marjorie got the idea of winding her hair around large cans. She collected tin cans, removed both ends, wound her hair around them, pinned the cans in place with bobby pins, and had a very satisfactory way of straightening her hair. Instead of kinky, tight curls, her hair had gentle, very attractive waves.

Until the air got humid.

When we were dating, Marjorie let me drive her little green jeep to take her up Rock Creek to show her that beautiful area. We stopped just above the Killamacue bridge so that I could show her the beautiful meadow where Rock Creek placidly flows through deep pools. The air must have been humid. Marjorie's long, black hair sprang into a very wide and tall tangle. I had a picture of that event for many years. It's apparently lost now, but I can still vividly see it in my mind.

That curly hair was both a blessing and a problem. It was also a source of wonder and sometimes of hilarity.

In Morocco peddlers were always coming to our door. On one occasion when I was not at home Marjorie answered the door with her hair put up in cans. The peddler was awestruck. That Moroccan man had never before seen an American woman with her hair rolled around tin cans. He was speechless. He never said a word. He simply put his forearm against the door frame, leaned into it, and laughed and laughed. Neither Marjorie nor I thought there was anything unusual about putting her hair up on cans, but we had a good laugh ourselves as we imagined the story that he told his wife that evening about the American woman he'd seen with her head covered with tin cans.