Redhead

A few weeks ago, I went to Oregon Home magazine’s 10-year anniversary party.

“I thought you’d have red hair!” Sheila, the editor, said upon seeing me for the first time.

Until that moment, although I’d been writing for Sheila for several years, we’d never actually met.

“Wait. Let me get used to your face,” she said while forming a frame with her hands.

I’d seen photos of Sheila in the magazine, so had some idea of what to expect although, in person, she is even more attractive, more exotic looking. She also has a calming presence, a result, perhaps, of having to herd a lot of freelance writers, including me.

“I wasn’t expecting brunette,” she shouted over the sound of a man singing Jimmy Buffett songs and the chatter of the other partiers.

The odd thing was, until two days prior, I had been a redhead. Then, in one of those oh-what-the-heck moods, I had my hair stylist apply a heavy dose of dark hair color onto my locks. In addition to being an editor, could Sheila also be psychic?

Of all my editors, Sheila is one of my favorites. At the party she not only acknowledged I wrote for other publications before encouraging me to “Keep sending ME your good essays,” but she also made sure I got something to eat and asked if I’d found a writer’s getaway cabin. (No, not yet.) After talking with me for several minutes, she let me go with a “Well, no doubt you’re tired,” a response to an earlier email of mine in which I said I might not make the party because, depending on how the work day went, I sometimes turned into a pumpkin by 7 p.m.

As I headed out of the noisy party room and into the dark night, making my way down a rain-glistened city sidewalk to my car, for the first time I realized something that, in the flurry of making a living, I sometimes forget ― that, in addition to being a coworker, an editor can also be a friend.