Hair today, gone tomorrow

I am on my way home.  Ten days ago I was delighted—and I guess a little unsettled—to be back on an airplane after three months of feeling tethered to Wellington. I moved through my old patterns in a tentative way—could people tell I was wearing a wig? Would I feel different? Was I strong enough to do the really significant press of work that was ahead of me? In the last ten days I have scaled a wall of interesting and difficult work, I have eaten beautiful food with dear friends, and I have begun to live into what it means to be on this side of the cancer experience.

One of the challenges of this time is that, as you know, I don’t have any hair (although more and more each day—a downy colourless fuzz now). I got used to wearing my wigs in the last two weeks before I went away—just to get my head used to the feel of it, the heat and the itch. But getting used to the feel of a wig isn’t the same as getting used to being out in public with it all the time. In two of the workshops I taught, the participants and I knew each other well enough to joke about the wigs—and I was comfortable enough with them to wear a different wig on the second day. Why have fake hair if you can’t have fun with it? It took me a little while to get used to the double takes, the puzzled look that broke into a wide smile, the teasing about how young I look in the Clare wig (and presumably how old I look in the Jennifer wig).

But it is still unsettling, a little, to put on my hair before I head out, to remember to make it even, to hold on to my hair in the wind, to hope that when I scratch it, my hair won’t list sideways like a scene in a Jim Carrey movie. And then there are the times when I don’t wear a wig at all.

Before I left, I had agonized about what I might wear in the fitness center. My walks with Melissa had left me in good shape, but scrawny me in workout clothes and nearly-bald head looked exactly like what I was: someone just barely out of chemotherapy.  Naomi and I decided that a silk scarf was a weird look for a gym and that wearing hot and itchy hair was out of the question. So I stuck on a beanie and headed down to sweat.

Notice the problem with that sentence? Beanies are hot—not exactly the feeling you want if you’re working out and you also have hot flashes (complements of my new daily medicine). And so, under the bright lights and surrounded by mirrored walls, I had to decide whether I was more into the look (keep the beanie on) or the comfort (take the beanie off). I took the beanie off.

Here’s what I notice about looking like a chemo patient in front of others, either strangers or light acquaintances: their eyes flicker to my head and then to the floor. In the gym, no one met my eye, no one smiled, no one said good morning.  The guy waiting for the elevator when I walked up suddenly wasn’t waiting for the elevator anymore (he looked at my head and at the floor and walked away—not sure whether my baldness reminded him of an exercise he forgot to do?).  All of this made me believe that we are, as a collective, really uncertain about how to deal with someone who looks sick. And I wondered, how would I have faced this if I had seen a spindly bald woman working out at the gym? What would my eyes have done? And what if I had been trapped in an elevator with her for 20 floors?

I am not sure I would have done particularly well myself. Now, I would look in her eyes and smile. “How are you feeling?” I might ask. “Love the fuzz.” It might be I’d get it wrong. Maybe she was bald by choice? But how many women do you know who are bald by choice? How many women do you know who have had chemo? (Melissa tells me your answer depends on your demographic.) All I know is that now I would err on the side of caring for the sick, for those who can feel invisible.

But I am a lucky one. I am rarely in places where I feel invisible. On a sparkling Sydney Sunday, I met a bunch of friends and we had brunch in the winter sunshine. We talked about death and sickness and aging and love and brownies and babies. We drank excellent coffee (which I can now taste) and laughed a lot. I swapped wigs half way through and let Anna feel my fuzzy head and squeal with delight. I am awash in gratitude for my friends, for my family, for my life. It is almost worth going through chemo to know how spectacular it is to not be in chemo anymore. I am stronger and healthier than I was when I began writing this entry. I love being alive.

 (Pictures today: Dawn over the Opera House, Naomi at breakfast on a layover in Sydney on her way to Europe, dessert over the city, some of the friends from my brunch)