MarcieB

When I was very young, I used to go to the beauty parlor with my grandmother and watch while she had her hair marcelled into soft waves. I’d collect abandoned scraps of hair on the floor and sort them into piles by color and then by shade. My own hair didn’t belong to me yet, my mother was in charge and she would roughly wash, comb and try to tame my curls with barrettes. It was always tearful work.

As a teenager, my best friend and I scorched each other’s hair, as we ironed it between towels. My sisters swore that wrapping their hair around empty orange juice cans at night would make it go straight, but nothing worked for me. The time came to accept my curly headed reality.

Two years ago a routine mammogram diagnosed breast cancer and I learned I’d have to go through chemo and lose my hair. That I would also lose a breast seemed less traumatic at the time. For the six weeks before chemo started, I had a love affair with my hair, made sweeter knowing that we were soon to part.

I learned that eighteen to twenty-two days after my first treatment, my hair would start falling out. I didn’t want to lose my hair, handful by handful, or shave my head alone, so I invited my friends to witness the event. I insisted they wear wigs or hats for the occasion. I bought a wig to wear after the deed was done.

The day of the party approached and my hair was still stuck to my head. I feared that my hair wouldn’t have started falling out by the party and my friends would be disappointed. Did I have the courage to shave my head before it started leaving on its own accord?

At spin class three days before the party, I wiped sweat from the back of my neck and a big wad of hair stuck to my palm.
I was relieved; the party could go on as planned.

On the afternoon of my head-shaving party, my sister braided my hair into ten braids so I could donate it to Locks for Love, an organization that uses human hair to make wigs for kids undergoing chemo.

My friends gathered in the garden wearing a hilarious assortment of wigs and hats. The wine flowed, and I almost forgot the purpose of the party.

My son began by cutting off my braids, and then my husband took over with the buzzer. The scissors hurt because the blades were dull and the sound of the buzzer was deafening, but soon, all that remained of my hair was a heap on the deck, already dispersing in the breeze. That I didn’t harbor any disfiguring scars or carbuncles on my scalp was a relief, and my friends commented on my beautifully shaped head. I took a quick shower and made an entrance in my wig and a long caftan, like an old-fashioned starlet.

I dutifully wore my wig when I greeted the mailman and wore a kerchief at the gym. After two weeks of being compliant, I realized I was hiding my baldness as if I were ashamed. In spin class, beside my bald friend Zane, I ripped off my babushka, thinking that if he could be bald, so could I. I no longer felt like a badly made up drag queen.

The hardest test was going grocery shopping, bald. The first time I made the attempt, I had my wig beside me in the car. I cried, as I chickened out and donned it at the last minute. The next time I succeeded, but I was convinced everyone was staring at me. After about ten or twenty times I forgot to notice and after about fifty or sixty times I forgot to care.

As my hair started growing, I examined it daily, but I was still bald for months. After three months my hair looked like the gray lamb coat my Russian grandmother used to wear. After six months, I had steel gray curls that lay close to my skull. After one year, I had a serious Afro in which I could hide small objects. After eighteen months, close friends told me that I might consider wearing a hat. All the time.

It was time to make a decision; either I’d cut my hair into a more human shape or get it straightened. I chose to straighten it, and regained a smooth cap of hair covering my ears. My hair could once again blow in the wind. I felt like me again, as I tossed my hair.

At the Grammies when Melissa Etheridge sang “Piece of My Heart” in memory of Janis Joplin, I felt as if it were only the two of us in the room. There she was, beautiful in her baldness, proud and strong, just like me.