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 — 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. This was the same year 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 to ask that same daughter of the hairdresser — who by now was doing my hair regularly — 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 across her shoulders like a soft blanket.
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 triangle. (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 the hair, eventually, 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 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 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.
We 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 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,” so my mother said. But there it was.
My sister came over, wanting, she said, to see my wig. I warned her about what my balding head would look like as I changed from the bandana to the wig, and she held me and cried with me, hard. It was the first of many kindnesses she’d give me during that time.
I have never had long, luxurious locks, but they were my locks, no matter how often I’d felt bad about them. Ever the crybaby, I deserved a moment or two to grieve them. And my sister made space for that.
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 wig 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 way more than hair deep.
Campfires Burning, Part I
Anyone who knows me well at all has heard my camp story. It’s legend in my family, and as we head into our annual beach week, it’s bound to come up. How my parents sent me to a two-week stint at an Episcopal Church camp on the Pamlico River where my sister had gone and loved it. And how I didn’t stay. We sit around the kitchen table and laugh about how the counselors all tried to entertain me with sailing lessons and camp fires and songs and whatnot, but I was having nothing of it. All I wanted was to go home and sit at the feet of my mother.
Since it’s my story to tell, I’ll tell what I remember. And it’s a lot. I was excited about going, spending what felt like weeks packing my steamer trunk with all I needed for that whole two weeks — short sets and new Keds and books and my Bible. Towels and clean white underwear and white socks. Crisp white notepaper and stamps for writing home. Some cash money for something called Canteen. Sheets and a blanket that smelled just like my mother’s linen closet.
When the day came, I was ready, and my mother drove me, with a friend, I think, the two or so hours to the river. The counselors took me to my assigned cabin, and I dragged my trunk up the steps and into a room filled with bunks. First issue: I had the top bunk. Second issue: No private bathroom stalls, but a room filled with showers with flimsy curtains and girls everywhere. It was almost as if I was late getting there. Then we all donned our bathing suits and headed to the river for the swim test. I think I passed, because they let me in the murky water the next day.
I tried not to cry that first night, up in the air as I was with the crickets hiding in the rafters, but it was hard. I was quiet, at least I hoped. The next day, we got to the work of riverside camp life — swimming and learning to sail a Sunfish, meeting each other, taking a group picture by the chapel. I have it somewhere. I felt like I met everybody in camp that day, boys and girls, even enough to pick out which boys I thought were cute! At the time, they say, I had the memory of an elephant, and I recall some of them still. (Yes later, one of my three-day crushes joined my church. I remembered him, but he did NOT remember me. Big surprise!)
It seemed pretty fun, but I was wary, having never spent time away from home except at my grandparents house. Back then, I’d stand in front of my mother’s wedding portrait and wail. But I was about to go into the fourth grade, and I was a big girl.
But at supper after my first full day of camp, they served me milk.
I have hated milk since I was a baby, and my mother used to add chocolate or sugar and vanilla just to get me to drink a whole glass at supper. But I gagged at the thought of drinking a carton of plain milk.
Chocolate please? None here, they said.
What about water?
Nope. Milk it is or nothing.
So I began to cry. And what these kind people had no idea about was that when I started, there was just no way to stop it, as the Broadway song goes. So I cried and cried. And cried some more.
The next day, the camp assigned me my own counselor, a cute young college kid who took me sailing and tried to talk me out of my misery. (Many years later, I would sit in front of his sister at church. All Eastern NC roads lead to other Eastern NC roads, but I digress.)
But even on a bright day with the wind in my face, there was nothing he could do. By afternoon, they let me call my mother, just to speak, but I pleaded for her, screaming, to come and get me.
On the third day she finally relented, and I waited on the steps of my cabin, my trunk packed, until the station wagon pulled up, my sister riding shotgun.
And this is where the legend really begins.
We walked around camp, and I showed her everything I’d done in the past three days. I held on to her, afraid she would sneak away from me, until I heard the words: Ok, go in the cabin and get your trunk.
Joy! Relief! I was going home! Forged by this news and super human strength, I dragged the trunk out onto the sandy soil, only to see my mother’s station wagon driving out of the camp gates in the flurry of dust. I ran behind her, sobbing, stop! STOP!!!! And just before she reached the arched entryway, her brake lights flickered.
I can’t imagine what went through her mind as she set her foot on the brakes, or the conversation in the car, or when she saw me run into the cabin. Or in my sister’s, as she witnessed the three-point turnaround to flee — though I would learn later that she begged to take my place. (Here with me a few days ago, she still can’t believe our mother made the decision to leave me.)
I don’t want to cast my mother as cruel here. She is not, and she was not then. I think she was trying to break me of my dependence on her, trying to make me stronger, as she had tried so many times in my short, almost 10-year-old life.
She drove me home that day saying I’d be grounded for the full two weeks I would have spent at camp, and I was ecstatic! I never returned to camp until I took my own second grader to a camp all the way across the state, and I cried the entire way home.
I’ve thought about my camp story a lot in the past few weeks, as I have begun a new kind of camp, one where there is no going home, no matter how much I wish my mother could rescue me. This time, she leaves me standing in the middle of that swirling cloud of dust and sand and her taillights never flicker.
And I’m the one who turns around and heads into the cabin and opens the trunk to see what she has hidden there for me.
Just after Mother’s Day I was diagnosed with breast cancer. In the weeks since, I’ve heard it called a journey, but it feels more like a kidnapping, so I’ll stick with that as I move through it. A journey to me is something you choose, like a pilgrimage or a river cruise and a trip to the Grand Canyon, something vast and inspiring, and one you hope will change you. Not that this kidnapping won’t change me — it already has — and though it’s come with lots of colorful brochures, it still feels a bit like I’m stuck on the top bunk in a place I really, really don’t want to be.
But in these weeks, I’ve found that my cabin is full of amazing women who didn’t want to be there, either. But they navigated the murky waters from that top bunk where newbies like me land, to the door where they have welcomed me, heavy-laden trunk and all.
So Chemo Camp has begun, and for the next few months I’m stuck here as the Red Devil, as they all it, seeps into my core and does its work, trying to kill what’s in me without actually killing me. So far, my days have been spent meeting some beautiful faces — almost all of them women — in my church, in my neighborhood, on my care team, in the hospital — and this time, my camp days seem almost bearable. I’ll tell you about them in later posts, as I this kidnapping drama continues.
I realize I’m mixing my metaphors here. Camp and kidnapping are not at all the same thing — for most people. But I’m finding out lately that I am not most people, at least in the kind of cancer I have (two kinds — Triple Negative and invasive ductal, in the same breast. UPDATE: 3!) Typical me, that.
But I promise not to be unique in the way I navigate it. When I first began sharing with friends, I wrote that there was no way through it except through it. A few weeks later, a friend sent me a book of daily meditations, and there it was in Psalm 21: “‘Lift up your eyes it the hills’ and go forward. There is no other way.”
I won’t be writing only about my cancer on this new blog. That’s not fun! But I will be sharing the gifts that come an almost daily basis. One friend, diagnosed last year and not yet 40 — just as she was about to give birth to her fourth child — wrote to me that she wished people would treat each other all the time like they do when they hear the word cancer. (She is cancer free after a year, with a beautiful healthy year-old baby boy!)
She is right. It’s been like having a birthday, almost every day for the past two months. Cards come, presents, flowers from gardens, food and visits. I couldn’t have told you the last time a friend stopped by for a real visit, until this happened to me. It’s been wonderful to feel so loved, and it’s humbling. To know that so many are thinking of me and praying for my healing is beyond measure. And I’m learning how to respond when I hear — and I will — that someone else around me has been kidnapped as well.
So I thank my mother, both for taking me home that day, but instilling in me that some things you just have to get through. You have the tools, and you will help others as you use them. She has done a lot of that in her life, and knowing that her youngest child has to go through this might be the hardest for her yet.
But I am not alone. I have my family, my faith and my cabin mates. And I have my trunk. And I know my mother packed it well.
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ps: Years after Camp I was on a book tour for Nags Headers, signing books in Elizabeth City, NC, when a woman asked me to sign a book for a child whose last name was Spence. “I knew a Penny Spence from here years ago at camp,” I said. From way down the line I heard a voice: “I’m Penny Spence.” She didn’t remember me, but I did her. I have a picture of her by the door of our cabin.
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