Ingredients:
1 quarantined teenager
$89.44 of supplies from Sally Beauty
7 hours
Generous handful of deep breathes

Directions:

1. When your 13-year-old daughter asks to dye her hair pink, resist the urge to say “no.” Remember your wish to be a bit wild at her age. Your parents, however, said you absolutely could not double-pierce your ears, so you hid in the bathroom with an ice cube, matches, and a needle. You covered the piercings with big round earrings until your guilt overwhelmed you and you came clean.
2. Order a tub of lightener, bottles of developer and toner, gloves, and brushes over the phone. Drive 30 minutes — it’s the closest store “open” during the first days of a pandemic — and knock stealthily until Alissa cracks the door and hands you two bags through the gap.
3. Know that your father, even now, may disapprove. He sees such choices as gateways to more disreputable behaviors. Remind yourself that he can be wrong, that this child is your child. (He will, in fact, refuse to voice an opinion on the pink hair.)
4. Gather old towels. Remove everything from the bathroom that you don’t want to ruin. Have your husband make two mugs of hot chocolate. Sit on the floor painting bleach onto 7-inch sections of your daughter’s hair, then wrapping it in foil. Don’t think about the ways this project could go wrong.
5. Ignore the tickle in your brain telling you that you should be working. You have been at your computer every day for a month, even weekends. So has your daughter. The world has gone online, gone insane. Today is Saturday. Spend it with your daughter.
6. Realize that you and your daughter have sat in peace for three hours. She hasn’t argued when you have told her to sit up straight. She has read you quirky bits from Snapchat and Instagram. Once she says, “You know, you’re actually a pretty cool mom.”
7. Text a photo to your out-of-work stylist, who tells you the hair is too orange. Admit that you are going to have to repeat step four. Sigh. Remind yourself how much you love your daughter. Eat dinner first.
8. Skip the careful painting; instead, mash the second round of bleach into your daughter’s hair with hands sheathed in latex gloves. Put the towels in the washing machine while your daughter’s hair does its thing with the bleach and toner. Notice that you are happy to be completely alone in the cool, dark basement.
9. Send pictures of your daughter’s 7 inches of blond hair to her friends and your friends. Go to bed exhausted.
10. On the second day, mix Virgin Pink semi-permanent dye with coconut-scented conditioner. Wonder who makes up names for hair dyes. Enjoy that today’s mixture smells better than yesterday’s pungent blend. Smash this mixture into your daughter’s hair like you did with the second round of bleach.
11. Realize that today you and your daughter will be less patient than yesterday when this process was new and exciting. Vow to overcome this problem and still be the cool mom.
12. Wrap the hair in a shower cap and hold it with a ponytail. Set a timer and lay on your bed meditating while your daughter watches TikTok videos and her hair turns pink.
13. Unwrap your daughter’s hair over the edge of the tub. Rinse out the dye with your two-in-one shower faucet. Be grateful that your husband installed the new shower head earlier this year because this step would be exasperating without it.
14. As your daughter beams at her hot pink hair, realize that this recipe will only work once. Your daughter will want to dye her hair again, but next time it will be Purple Rain or Iris Green. Or her friends Bhima and Helena will help. Or every element will be identical except the unpredictable chemistry of mothers and daughters, that magical ingredient available in just the right amount this time to create a memory you will look back on when all your hair is silver.