Loose attachment

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Aidan in my wig, me in my loose hair

I love my hair. I may have mentioned this before, but my hair is very different than I was when I last wrote about it. Short and spikey and a little edgy looking. I still start when I see my reflection in the mirror because I am so totally and utterly not used to looking like this.

I notice, though, that I’m not as attached to my hair. And I mean that in both the possible ways.  Each time I see it or run my fingers through I think, “Thank you for being on my head today. I’ll miss you when you’re gone.” But I don’t feel my eyes fill with tears about it as they sometimes would when I contemplated losing my curls. I am grateful for it while it’s here, and I am ready to say goodbye to it when it goes.

Which is good, because today it has started falling out, I think (like clockwork on day 14 as everyone said). It doesn’t have the great drama I’ve heard of, the hair that flies off in a windstorm or streams out through an open car window. Instead, it’s just like the shedding that usually happens, times a hundred, along with the aching head that everyone described that means my hair actually hurts when it moves in the wind. That brings tears to my eyes, but just briefly.

In Bali in October

The whole thing has made me wonder about attachment in general. I’ve had these long and mostly fruitless conversations about non-attachment with Buddhist friends and monks over the years about my curiosity about whether people get attached to the idea of non-attachment. And the related question about whether giving up on attachment has some significant and rarely discussed side effects itself. (This is a conversation I’ve been attached to having, by the way, as I keep at it endlessly.) I get that attachment is the birthplace of suffering and that it would be better to not suffer. But isn’t attachment also the birthplace of love? And, while we’re in this neighbourhood, isn’t love one of the core birthplaces of suffering?

Last night we went to a choral concert in Wellington to hear the Faure Requiem and assorted other works attached to the Passion story, appropriate for this time of year. In this little tiny church with a little tiny choir, I was flooded with the ways that our love for one another and our terror about and deep sadness over our death and theirs has inspired stunning music and poetry and art for all of recorded human history. I watched the evening light slanting through the stained glass windows sparking off of the golden hair of my two kids and my husband and I felt that ache of love that seems to require the breaking open of my heart to ease. And later, back in our living room watching the crescent moon sink into the sea, I held Naomi’s head in my lap as she read Vogue and explained to me about all the players on the global fashion scene. I am very very attached to her.

Which brings me back to my hair. I made an excellent decision about cutting it, losing the curls first so that losing the rest wouldn’t be so hard. I feel good about that choice every day. Loose attachment to something loosely attached feels exactly right to me. But I also feel really good about the fierce attachment I have to the family and friends I love so deeply, even if it sets me up for suffering. I want to feel the full pain of Nicki’s death, unmediated by a kind of loose attachment. I want to feel the full joy of a walk in the hills with Melissa, of baking with Aidan. I want to feel the love-fuelled bubbles of excitement about Laurie’s visit. I feel flooded by love on multiple occasions each day. The delight of that is almost painful.

Maybe I am doing the non-attachment thing wrong. But until I understand it better, I will try to be loosely attached to the things that matter less—to my hair, to my nails, to sugar in my tea (sigh), to my stuff.  But I will be fiercely attached to people (and also to these dogs I adore). I will be grateful for the love I feel for them every day, each day knowing that our ability to love and be loved is a miracle. I will be attached to this landscape, to the way the clouds catch on Kapiti island in the near-dawn. I will be attached to life, to waking up each day and falling asleep each evening and filling my days with work and people that delight me. And if that brings suffering, I’m up for it.

My friend Mark sent me a box of poetry, one poem in each creamy thick envelope, numbered for each day of chemo (I am attached to Mark). Yesterday’s poem:

To be Alive

By Gregory Orr

To be alive: not just the carcass

But the spark.

That’s crudely put, but…

If we’re not supposed to dance,

Why all this music?

We humans are built for dancing, for attachment, for love, for joy. And for keening pain and loss and death and grief. Until I fully believe that non attachment will diminish the later without diminishing the former, I'll stay loosely attached only to those things that are appropriate, like my hair, for example.