
I should have stuck with the Mohawk look, no?
When the producer got up out of her chair and walked over to brush my hair away from my eyes, I had to stiffle giggles. I was thrilled not just because CBS was in my living room filming me for a segment on families and the recession, but because my hair had gotten so long, it temporarily stopped the shoot. It was official: I’d reached what I consider the sixth stage of grief — shallowness.
The last time CBS had filmed me at my house, my hair was working its way through a blackish-brown post-chemo fro. I didn’t complain because the year before that, I had gone as Dr. Evil for Halloween, and yet I didn’t need the bald cap that had come with the costume. Cancer took my hair away, and then brought it back as something completely different.
But I never liked my curly mop of darker-than-normal hair. I didn’t like it when I saw pictures of me from last February at the Pull-Ups Potty Training party, looking like a small poodle was napping on my head. But it was better than the GI Jane-just-got-home-from-Kabul look I sported at my mother’s 70th birthday party two years ago. So, I kept my mouth shut.
In the past few months, however, my hair has gotten straighter, lighter and longer. I’m still growing it, just because I can. I’ve come to love it. I’ve also come to think that my oncologist was wrong. He’d said that being bald was hard for cancer patients, especially female ones. But I did bald just fine. It was the two years my hair came back that were hard for me, because I didn’t look like me.
So when the producer swept the hair from my eyes, I felt like I’d finally made it through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief to what I believe should the sixth stage: shallowness. Instead of thinking, “Thank you, God, for letting me live so I could enjoy this moment,” I was thinking, “Yay! I have cool hair!” After all I’ve been through — chemo, radiation, fear of death, scars, pain — I have reached the point where I think of my bangs first. And that, is a great stage to finally reach.
Be happy about your hair Jen and anything else you want to, you earned it!
You go, gorgeous!
You deserve it that feeling. Enjoy it. You are a survivor and those are the moments that remind you. Who cares if it means your shallow?