Joe arrived on the planet Earth with red hair.  Actually, as a three year old at play group once pointed out to her mother, rather impatiently: “It’s not red, it’s ORANGE.”  Like most redheads, Joe has not been fond of the distinction.  I have no idea why that is, except that the worlds loves redheads, they are special no question, and they get tired of hearing about it, especially as children.  I also suspect children, in their inexplicable cruelty, may also make it a source of ridicule.  I don’t know whether Joe went through this, but I do know his hair has been different colors over the years…tinged blond, black, auburn.  He also wears a hat 99% of the time, but I think that’s not so much the red hair, but the fact that I put a hat on him in the hospital and never took it off, to shield his fair skin from the sun.  By the time he was three years old I think he felt naked without a hat, and has worn one ever since.

I believe I’ve already mentioned at the hospital he was a little red haired baby amongst a sea of Latino and Asian babies, so I was known as the mother of the redhead.  Later we would go to Golden Gate Park to play and I would hear crowds of Spanish speaking mothers oohing and aahing – “Mira!  Cabeza roja!”   One time at Muir Woods a Japanese tourist asked if they could take a photo of the adorable little red haired American boy – somewhere in Japan my son is enshrined in someone’s photo album, a memory from a trip to the United States in 1988!

I know for a fact it made life easy for him when he started Montessori school.  I would park the car next to the little playground where kids who had already arrived would be playing until it was time to go inside.  He would get out of the car and I would hear little voices yelling from the play structure, before I had even closed the car door: “Hi Joe!”  “Joe’s here!”  “Joe!”   It might be difficult at first to remember other kids’ names – they all looked alike. But the redhead – ah, we know, that’s Joe!

I have to look at photos now to see that beautiful hair, because of his hats and because it is presently auburn.  He has explained to me that, indeed, it gives him a bit of anonymity in Boulder, Colorado, a relatively small town, to not be the guy with the red hair.   You can imagine my delight when I see a little boy with orange hair toddling after mom, or even a grown up young man – there is always a resemblance of a sort, as if they came from the same cave family a billion years ago.  I am hoping, of course, that there will be another little redhead in my future, and I’m not particular if it’s a girl or boy.  When people ask where Joe “got” his red hair, I always say Aunt Joan.  Even if the future grandchild is not his offspring, at least the answer to such a question will be “Uncle Joe.”