Here’s this week’s Smartmom from Brooklyn Papers.

On the day of the 30th high school reunion of the Walden School (a
progressive private school on the Upper West Side that no longer
exists), Smartmom spent many hours beautifying at the Frajean Salon on
Seventh Avenue.

But even Stephen and the staff at the full-service hair salon/spa
could not make her look like herself at 17, a hippie wannabe who longed
to sing like Joni Mitchell.

(Come to think of it, what the hell was she doing in a hair salon. If she wanted to look like herself at 17, she would let it all hang out, split ends and all.)

The first order of business was highlights. Looking like Hellraiser
with tin foil sticking out of her head, Smartmom laughed. In high
school, she was the brown-haired girl with big brown eyes that all the
boys wanted to be friends with, while Smartmom’s best friend was the
blonde beauty whom all the boys wanted to sleep with.

But for the reunion, Smartmom would have blonde highlights! She knew
that would throw her old high school friends for a loop. Maybe no one
would recognize her.

After the highlights, Smartmom went downstairs for a waxing in a
room with bright examination lights and “soothing” New Age music. Hot
Wax Lady used boiling wax to shape Smartmom’s eyebrows (no Frida Kahlo
unibrow like in high school) and rip off (ouch) the old-lady hairs that
grow from her chin and make her feel like the witch in Hansel and
Gretel.

Then it was time for her toes and feet, which had to look beautiful
because she was wearing gold metallic sandals that made her look six
feet tall. She may have been short in high school, but 30 years later,
she’d be an Amazon.

The haircut and styling came next. After the cut, Smartmom watched
nervously as Stephen got out his hair curler from the bottom shelf.

“Please, I don’t want Farrah Fawcett hair,” Smartmom warned.

“But the 1970s are very big right now,” Stephen said.

“Yeah, but Walden wasn’t that kind of ’70s,” Smartmom said. “We were
very natural back then. We didn’t use make-up, or even shave our legs.”

This piqued the attention of Stephen’s 20-ish assistant.

“You didn’t wear make-up?” she said, shocked.

Clearly, she was too young to know of a time when women burned their bras and rebelled against the feminine mystique.

Finally, Stephen applied the make-up. It made Smartmom so nervous
that she thought she’d throw up — but as he applied a smooth layer of
foundation, he slowly erased 30 years of stress from her skin.

Gone were the lines from 30 years of laughing and crying; the dark
rings under her eyes from a cumulative loss of sleep from all-nighters
at college, 3 am breast-feedings and overheated arguments with Hepcat
about money; the crows-feet next to her eyes that made her think of her
mother; the scowly lines next to her mouth from feeling so much
disapproval and pain; her sallow complexion from spending too many
hours staring at her computer.

When Stephen was done, Smartmom looked great. But later when she and
Hepcat took the F-train to the reunion, she realized that she had spent
more than $300 for an impossible goal: she could never look like she
did 30 years ago because she wasn’t the same person as she was then. For one thing, she would never have spent five plus hours in a hair salon in 1976. Not a chance.

The reunion passed by in a blur of open-hearted, Cabernet-fueled
conversation. Most of her former classmates — financial wizards,
psychotherapists, writers, lawyers, environmentalists, an op-ed editor
of a national newspaper, an opera singer and a dress designer — seemed
to be doing what they wanted to do. Everyone looked great (even if the
men had lost most of their hair) and were as idealistic as ever —
products of a school that taught them to question authority and make a
difference in the world.

Smartmom was moved to tears (and skunk eyes from smudged eyeliner)
when Opera Singer (the aforementioned blond best friend) sang “Our Love
is Here to Say." She even got flirtatious with some of the boys she had
liked back then.

Later, in the cab back to Brooklyn, Smartmom thought about how much
had gone on since graduation: there was college, a career, Smartmom and
Hepcat’s trip cross-country in a 1963 Ford Galaxy; their wedding on a
rainy day in July; the birth of Teen Spirit and the Oh So Feisty One in
a Manhattan hospital.

Back in 1976, you could get a brownstone on Garfield Place for less
than $20,000. It was before the AIDS crisis, the fall of the Berlin
Wall, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Bush 1, Bush 2, cellphones, compact
discs, Jimmy Carter, the Intifada (1 and 2), the iPod, the L.A. riots,
SUVs and Tiananmen Square.

Obviously, Smartmom knew she could never return to her 17–year-old
self in the same way that the world can never go back to the way it
used to be.

And then she understood: a high-school reunion is supposed to be a time to honor who you were then and respect who you are now.

And if Smartmom looked 30 years older that was OK. Everyone else did, too.