She showed up at her stylist’s shop with a bottle of product. She sat down, placed the bottle on his stand, and told her stylist very directly: “This is making my hair fall out.”

She wanted a different product that did exactly the same things, except not that. She had really loved it; the way it kept her hair in place, the way it wasn’t too heavy or oily and didn’t make her hair too stiff.  Her stylist sat down on his doctor-like stool and studied the ingredients on the back of the bottle. It felt like ages had passed when he finally looked up at her, held up the bottle, and said: “I don’t think this is the culprit; a lot of things can make your hair fall out.”  He began to list “a lot of things,” like diet and stress and the-change-of-seasons, continuing on as he cut her hair, with other-reason-after-possible-reason, until she was fully annoyed.

She had only recently learned about sulfate-whatevers and parabin-whatnots, words that she had seen on the packaging of products announcing they were “Free Of!” thus making suspect everything she’d used before, all her bottles now potential-carriers. Truthfully, she didn’t know much about it all, but the more her hair continued to fall out and the more she searched for a reason, the more she was convinced of this product’s guilt, a product she used often, and was not “free of” anything in particular.

Now, there she sat, watching her stylist trim the ends of the long brown hair that remained listening to his never-ending list.

They had not occurred to her, those other questions. The ones that led to other solutions. That required other actions. But of course, she thought, settling into the news.  If only it were all contained in one small bottle, so easily swapped for another. If only she could hold the problem and solution at once in the palm of her hand.