Cancer Lesson #64: Hair Today Revisited
When my hair first started to grow again, I looked like a baby ostrich. I couldn’t quite carry off the uber-chicness of extremely short hair, so I kept my head covered for the most part, usually with my baseball cap (very un-chic).
My daughter would take off the hat and rub my head like it was Buddha’s belly. I put up with it because I love her.
By the time I went back to work, the weather was getting cooler, so I started wearing wigs. I was working in the children’s section of the library, and the kids’ reaction to my hair color was sometimes quite entertaining.
For my first storytime in seven years, I felt like I needed a little extra oomph. I wore Darling Daughter’s fluorescent pink wig and promised my small charges the next time they saw me my hair would be a different color.
To follow through on that pact, I bought a new wig from a place I call “the hooker store.” (Darling Daughter didn’t appreciate the humor, but if you saw it, you’d understand.)
“Ooooh! Your hair is violet,” said one little girl, exhibiting an astonishing vocabulary and knowledge of color for a five-year-old.
Another little one said, “I like your hair dye.”
Her mother was aghast.
“How do you know it’s dye?” she asked.
“Because her hair was a different color last time I saw her,” replied her unfazed daughter.
The Starbucks barista asked if my hair color was in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
It was, I suppose, albeit unintentionally.
Even when I wore my “normal” wig, people commented. Maybe the raspberry pink streaks made me more approachable.
My favorite was midnight black with electric blue tips, also Darling Daughter’s.
She wouldn’t give it to me, though, not even when I played the cancer card.
Kids.
Keeping A-Breast: Cancer Lessons 