I feel bad about my hair
“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
― Nora Ephron
My hair and I finally came to an understanding when I was in high school and I got it cut in a short shag. Until my senior year, I’d had years of bad hair days, starting when I was 1 and had not a single hair on my head.
Maybe I was cute when I was four (not a lot of pictures exist, so there is no telling) but when I was five, the daughter of my mother’s hairdresser who was in beauty school at the time, practiced her perming skills on me. My otherwise short, tow-headed sleek ‘do’ was now a nest of curls more suitable for a bluebird than me.
When I did choose my own style — despite every reason to the contrary — I chose a long Patty Duke flipped-up style that drew my chin down to my chest and widened the gap in my teeth.
That was the same year that I got acne and breasts and everything about me seemed to grow so awkwardly that I wanted to keep myself hidden in my room until the ugly duckling gave way to the promised beautiful swan.
Only that part didn’t happen either. Oh I grew out of the Patty Duke and cut my hair shorter and managed to be if not a beautiful swan, then an ok looking duck.
But my hair. My sister had long locks in high school (she was dubbed the pretty one and I the baby) and I longed for those. But some hair just isn’t gonna go there, and when mine tried, the ends split and dried out and frayed until when I finally got the nerve for that same daughter of the hairdresser — who know was doing my hair — to give me that short shag. My mother said then, and often, “You always look better with your hair on the short side.”
She’s raised me on bobby-pin curls done up Saturday nights for Sunday church, so I knew nothing of curlers. My sister must have had some instruction — maybe from Molly, her friend’s sister who was in beauty school — because she rolled her hair with giant curlers, frosted it just so and it came out looking beautiful, her hair draping so across her shoulders.
But I always felt bad about my hair.
That shag, though, took me through the 70s until Dorothy Hamill came along and showed us how to think about hair as geometry. Her hair molded to her every move, forming exact angles no matter how many “Hamill camels” she performed. This, somehow, was a language I thought my hair might understand. I wanted my hair to move like that. I still remember the day I sat bravely in a new Raleigh stylist’s chair at Crabtree and asked for it. From that day forward my hair and I began a new relationship with each other, me and my Hamill cut, though I would later abandon it from time to time, depending on Princess Diana’s chosen style.
Then came the 80s, and talk about geometric hair! I got another perm and my new curls formed the perfect equilateral. (Every time I see “Sleepless in Seattle” I’m reminded of this.) But now I had not only my head to care for but my daughter’s, so my hair had to go. (Hers was so much prettier and thicker than mine.) So I cut mine short, where it stayed, and for the next 30 years, I felt good and bad about my hair, depending on my stylist.
I found myself been feeling bad again, after staying with the same stylist for too many years, and in the past year I left him. It was truly like a divorce, leaving the man who’d given me massages on my head and neck for at least 10 years, who’d styled my hair for my children’s weddings — letting go of that, and of our friendship, was hard.
But from the first time in her chair, I knew Carla would make me feel better, if not great, about my hair again.
And she did, painting it the color my sister said I was born with. And using her own geometric skills to shape my locks so that no matter how many weeks passed, the shape stayed the same and in place. I didn’t feel bad about my hair for the first time in a very long time.
And then, well, chemo happened.
When I first entered the Rex Cancer Center doors for my first appointment, a beautiful, tan and bald woman passed by me, her colorful skirts swaying as she walked. Her head, shiny as a bowling ball, glowed as she walked. No way could I sport that look. My head, though fully covered with hair at the time, was covered not in shine beneath my hair, but eczema. Not a good look on its surface, I could well imagine.
W met with our chemo educator a week later and she looked at my hair and said: “You’ve got a really cute cut.” As in: too bad! And then went on the explain that if I kept my hair, I’d be the first in history. The drugs I’m taking target all the healthy, growing cells in my body as well as the bad, so the healthy, growing hair follicles are the first — at least the most noticeable — to go.
When Carla heard my diagnosis, we both cried. Then she trimmed my hair and said she’d be taking care of me for the next nine months, whether I had hair or not.
A few days after my second treatment, my husband, who had never even met any of the stylists who’ve cared for my hair in almost 38 years of marriage, drove with me to Carla’s, sitting on her bench as she gave me a buzz cut. (She’d cut it in a perky pixie only a week before, to prepare me. At the same time, she styled my wig so well my husband couldn’t tell I was wearing it for 20 minutes.)
Carla took her time, sliding her shears through my head until I said stop. I’d not seen my head so bald in my life, and it to say it was hard doesn’t cover it.
A friend who had breast cancer years ago had given me bandanas to hide my head, and I tied one in a cute bow and went to supper with friends. The next day, we packed up for a week at the beach, and all seemed right.
Until the next day, when in the shower, my hair came out in sheets.
Long gone was the short shag and the Hamill and the wedge and all the other “dos” I’d sported in all these years of having “the best hair in the family.” But there it was. I cried, hard. I have never had long, luxurious locks, but they were my locks, no matter how often I’d felt bad about them.
I hated for my children to see me this way. I prayed that my 15-month-old grandson Henry would know me by my eyes and not my hair. The next morning, I was up early, as I am every day during this kidnapping, and he greeted me with bright eyes and a smile. And all was right.
I’m getting used to it. My husband says he can see my eyes, brighter than they were before. I honestly don’t know why. Because I am tired, and sometime sad, though showering is quick and getting dressed for the day is far easier than it was a month ago.
As for the Nora Ephron quote at the top of this story: I’m not the victim in my story, nor am I the heroine. (those are my docs, and God) I am, in fact, myself, and I just happened to have been taken aside from my life for a little while while my kidnappers — my care team — whom I am growing to love, as hostages do, make me well. The victim, we all hope and pray, is actually the cancer, and that with each sometimes grueling treatment, it is fading, fading so that in a year’s time, it will be the dimmest memory for us all. Most especially for the tips of my hair.
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If you are facing a cancer diagnosis that promises hair loss, think about these tips:
Take pictures of your hair as you love it.
Shop for a wig while you still have hair, so those fitting you can see how you wear it.
Wigs can be expensive and are not necessarily covered by insurance. Some cancer centers (like Rex) offer cancer patients a free wig, hat or hair covering. Take advantage of that.
Have your own stylist trim it to suit you(make sure they are trained in cutting wigs, as of course the hair will not grow back)
Your scalp will signal you when it’s time. It will become sensitive, even a bit painful, as your hair is about to go.
Allow yourself to grieve. You’ve had your hair a long time.
Don’t shield your family from the reality of what you’ll look like for the next almost year
Consider your beauty. It’s more than hair deep.
