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Twenty years ago today, I met one of the most important men in my life, my hairdresser, Robert Vasquez.

I'd been in Boise just two months, and imagined Idaho as a way station on my travels to some big city. But Rebecca Batt's Boxing Day party changed that, marking the moment I began a cherished friendship with Mr. Robert and the beginning of a long love affair with Idaho.

We sat around a 14-foot table, eating spectacular food prepared by Rebecca (yes, her dad is Phil) at her six-burner restaurant-issue stove until after midnight. Reflecting on the the sagebrush version of Dorothy Parker's Algonquin Hotel salon, I realized Boise was a happening town and Idaho a marvelously rich, beautiful and diverse state.

One thread connects me to that epiphany — my comradeship with Robert, who's cut my hair throughout my 20 years at The Idaho Statesman.

Every couple months, he shampoos and snips. And we talk. Everything in my life that really matters I've discussed with Robert: relationships, marriage, my kids, professional triumphs and losses, divorce and a passage through depression.

Robert's spoken about dear friends who've died of AIDS and addiction, relationships, his professional and spiritual paths. He's talked of his own fight with addiction — his "pill-o-rama days." His habit began with a car wreck and access to painkillers, and climaxed with the 30 days he spent at the Betty Ford Clinic in 1997.

When I was a kid in Cupertino, Calif., I shined shoes in a barber shop, where men talked sports and knocked about their wives. But they lacked the intimacy Robert and I share. I'm glad it's become OK for men to confide in their hairstylists.

"You'd be surprised how common it is," Robert says. "When you're one-to-one and I'm touching you, I mean, how many people do you let play with your hair?

"And people trust you with their image, their appearance. It's amazing how a person can come in so uptight and you shampoo their hair, you cut their hair, and so much of that dissolves."

For most of his 30-year career in Boise, Robert worked at Graeber and Co., where he is one of four partners. Three years ago, seeking a quieter environment, he set out on his own and now works in a remodeled carriage house behind his lovely old house on Main Street.

In the Graeber days, he often had powerful people in his chair: CEOs, judges, politicians. Passing one another in the beauty shop, I felt a strange kinship with these fellow Robert loyalists. Outside this safe setting, they would be guarded, but at Graeber's we shared our trust in Mr. Robert's magic to make us look good.

Robert is connected. His clients help him understand what makes Boise tick, and he's graciously shared his insights. But like many hairdressers, he also helps people suffering through divorce, unemployment or tragedy and makes them feel better, pro bono.

"He has clients who could buy a whole city block," said his partner, Joe Wheat, "but he also has people who skip meals."

Robert was born in Ogden 53 years ago but moved to Pocatello and graduated from Pocatello High in 1969.

He was drawn to hair-cutting at a young age. "I would go with my mom to the salon and watch them do hair. I said, 'I could do that.' "

He attended the Jolé College of Beauty on a scholarship. At 16, he won a student hairdressing contest in Boise, piling ostentatious curls on models' heads. Still in high school, he worked at the top salon in Pocatello, the Bannock Hotel. After a six-month stint in the Navy, he was discharged because his father had left the family and his mother was disabled.

He moved to Boise and was hired by Bill and Jean Graeber, who were impressed by his work in contests. Robert supported his mom and younger sister. In the mid-'90s, Bill Graeber sold his salon's name to Robert and Joe and their partners Carolyn Shelly and Odell England.

Robert left for a year in the 1970s, moving to an ashram in Denver and cutting Guru Maharaji's hair. Maharaji was a young Indian whose meditation techniques attracted many followers in the 1970s. But Robert returned to Boise, where he, too, gave up bright-lights-big-city aspirations.

Along the way, both of us have wrestled to find out what really matters, who we are. In middle age, we're finally content, grounded, happy with ourselves.

In the words of Robert, my hairdressing guru: "I believe that every one of us has within us the capacity to be at peace, the means to experience peace. The things we experience in life challenge that peace. And I believe that those challenges are what make us better human beings. And that's who I am."

Me, too. Happy Boxing Day and Happy Holidays.