With Love on Your Anniversary

Those of you who knew Jessica and Isaac back in the 60s will remember Jessica’s long, golden hair. Well, a couple of weeks before their wedding, Jessica asked me to make an appointment for her with my hairdresser. She informed me that she wanted to get a short hairstyle. I told her that I had always been jealous of her gorgeous tresses but that I could not tell a lie, “You’d be crazy to cut your crowning glory; DON’T DO IT.” However, she would not be dissuaded so I finally made the appointment.

The evening of the haircut, Jessica dropped Isaac off at my apartment in the East Village to wait for us while we supposedly went off to do some shopping. Well, Jessica got a very short haircut, as short as Mia Farrow’s was in those days (for those of you who can remember that far back). She was still beautiful, but it was quite a transformation.

When we got back to my apartment, Isaac opened the door, took one look at Jessica, and burst into tears sobbing, “Why did you do that?” We were very gentle with him, but it took him a while to recover his composure. However, true love runs deep, and he married Jessica just the same.

Some months after the wedding, we went to visit my parents and Sallie in Far Rockaway for the weekend. Jessica brought along a blond wig that Isaac’s mother, Hilda, had given her as a gift. (Hilda had no doubt noticed her son’s nostalgia.) Now this was long, blond, BIG HAIR—a 1960s Nancy Sinatra-look, totally out of keeping with Jessica’s delicate frame and demure manner, and we had a good laugh when she modeled it. In fact, we became so raucous that Isaac donned the wig wearing my bathrobe to complete the costume, and though there is no way he even came close to looking like a female impersonator—a transvestite perhaps, but definitely not a female impersonator.

The long and the short of it is—please forgive the pun— that Jessica has worn her hair in many styles and at several lengths, though never very long again, over the course of the last 40 years, and their marriage and love has not only endured but grown stronger and deeper. They have made their life together a work in progress, and we all admire and love them, and wish them many more decades of love and happiness together.

Love, Vicki