We had gotten through what we knew was going to be the hardest part of our new normal…telling the kids. Thankfully they were great. I am not going to lie…our home life is different now. There is this invisible tension, perhaps more accurately, anxiousness, or heightened emotion than normal. Supposedly, this “state of being” actually IS normal for people in our situation.
So what next. We are two weeks away from surgery. We know what type of tumor we WANT it to be, what mutations we want it to have etc…We know hierarchically what we are praying for. Our decision tree of “if x type of tumor, than you want it to be y grade with z type of mutation(s)”. It was a lot.
But I was more focused on the now, perhaps due to denial or just because my motherly instincts just always seem to trump any other interest.
Our daughter Sally looks exactly like me when I was her age, including the short hair. Only in my situation it was my mom who enforced the short hair…and in Sally’s case it was all Sally. This little girl is fierce. She is such a contradiction of herself. She has this tough exterior, seems immune to virtually everyone who doesn’t know her and calls her a boy even when she is wearing pink or something with unicorns and hearts. She just makes this face and says “that person called me a boy! haven’t they ever seen a girl with short hair?” and she sloughs it off. I on the other hand, you can verify with anyone in my family, would throw myself on the ground, very dramatically, and bawl my eyes out that someone thought I was a boy. It happened a lot.
However, Sally has a whole other side to her. It is this amazing soft caring concerned side of her. She is our child that needs more reassurance, worries easier and is emotional. Even emotionally she is my mini-me.
My kids have only known me with long hair. Shortest was a long bob and longest was hair down to the middle of my back. I like my hair. It is one thing I was blessed with…a good head of long thick straight hair!
I feared that if after surgery we would need to do radiation, that I would lose my hair – at least partially. But that would not be for at least 2 more months. My head would have to heal, and lots of other things would need to heal, the swelling on the brain etc….so “treatment” wouldn’t begin for a while.
So now was the time to cut my hair off. I was certain of it. As a matter of fact after I did it, we had another meeting with our surgeon. He walked in the door and said “you didn’t have to cut your hair! We are not going to shave your hair at all!”. I explained my reasoning.
Anyway, back to the story. I needed to have the kids remember me prior to surgery as Mommy with short hair, vs. identifying the loss of my long hair with the surgery.
Enter Christophe and Alicia. First Alicia. She is the one that informed me about a man who lives on the East side of Seattle who makes real hair wigs. I didn’t think there would be anyone in Seattle who did this. NYC, LA, Dallas yes…but never thought this type of artist existed here. What a great relief this was.
I made an appointment and went to visit him two weeks before my surgery. He explained how my hair needed to be cut so he could work with my hair to create a wig. ‘WHATEVER YOU DO – DO NOT HAVE HIM CUT ONE BIG PONYTAIL”. Okay. I didn’t know that. That is what I did for Locks for Love my entire life….he said it was impossible to sort where the hair came from making it almost impossible to recreate a real hair wig that looks exactly like your existing head of hair.
Next was Christophe…I need to get my hair cut short. My daughter was ecstatic because now we were going to look alike – something she always wanted. I always saw our uncanny resemblance but she didn’t. I have long blonde hair and she has short brown hair. However, my natural color is brown and in every picture of me up until college my hair was brown. That is until I went to USD. Trying desperately to fit in…I “hit the bottle” (as in bleach) and became a blond and never looked back.
I emailed Christophe (hairdresser extraordinaire) my situation. I had a brain tumor. I needed to get my hair cut short and needed him to cut my hair in long strips/extensions. I needed to get it done now, as in yesterday. Christophe however is booked out at least 5 weeks. Hence the email directly to him…vs sharing what was so intensely personal with some random person who answers the phone at the salon. I then added, I had given in due to my guilt…of letting Sally get the tips of her hair colored blonde.
I was THAT mom. I actually laughed to myself about this a lot before it happened. All I kept thinking is that my friends from school were going to rip me a new one “oh nice job…you let your daughter get her hair colored!? Now my kid is going to want the same darn thing”….uggh. But I had to do it. She deserved a little pick me up. And one universal truth I know about women of any age…a good day at the hair salon is the ultimate pick me up!
Christophe was ON IT. He had had a very personal experience with brain tumors and knew what to do. He suggested I get to the salon 45 minutes before Sally…alone. That way my kids would not see how he was cutting my hair. It was amazing. Starting in the back and putting small tight rubber bands around each extension of my hair. I was counting…and watching thru the mirror as two assistants helped him to expedite matters. He would pull up a chunk of hair and say “cut here” with his heavy French accent and the other would bind the hair. This happened no less than about 60 times around my head. But he didn’t want to cut too much in one area because after we had our little “Edward Scissorhands” exercise, he actually needed to give me a hair cut. As soon as my husband Will and our two kids walked into the salon for Sally’s appointment it was finished. And he placed all of my extensions in order(back of head, left temple, right temple, center) in this beautiful box you would have expected to find at Hermes or Bulgari…just deeper. They were wrapped in tissue like a special little chocolate truffle you get from Frans. It looked beautiful – and very very weird. Head in a box – well at least hair in a box.
Sally sat on the chair next to me. My kids were smiling. They liked my hair short. My husband and I were the only two that really knew the motivation of the “emergency short hair cut” and we were emotional. I will never forget, 16 inches later, my husband coming up from behind me, as I sat still in the chair and just said “you’ve never looked more beautiful…you are never going to have long hair again. I love you so much”. Well that about made me want to start bawling my eyes out but our sweet littles were watching so I just said ” thank you and I love you back…and you are never going to have long hair either”. It broke the emotion of the moment.
Now it was Sally’s turn. Tony, who does my color is amazing. We chatted about how blonde we were going to let Sally go. As you are probably aware – bleach on a child is not a good idea, nor is it a safe idea. But Tony is masterful and had a plan. He sat Sally down and they spiked her hair straight up ala Bart Simpson. He then took out the rubber gloves and painted the bleach onto his gloved hands. He thoughtfully waved his hands across the tips of Sally’s hair back and forth very gently. As if you were wiping your hands against blades of grass. The bleach was on the tips of her hair a solid two inches from her scalp.
Sally asked if her hair could stay like this. Anyone who knows our little girl is not surprised by this. Even our son Will was getting into it.
With my final blow dry and Sally’s final rinse my little mini-me looked more like me than ever. I am not saying this is a good thing. But it certainly was for Sally. On our car ride home she exclaimed “Will, I look way more like mommy than you look like Daddy”. We are totally the same. She asked if next time she could get more blonde.
I hit the bottle at 19…my daughter was hitting the bottle at 8.
Why Not Me 