Ode to my hair...

April 28, 2010
I've spent an awful lot of time thinking about my hair recently. Like most women, my relationship with my hair has been pretty tense at times. Sometimes you love it, mostly you hate it. We have a constant dialog with it. "Why can't it be thicker/thinner/straighter/curlier/longer/shorter". "Just LOOK at this haircut - now what am I going to do!!" "ARGGH! that's not the color I wanted? You want how much to fix it?!" Hair is never easy.

It took me the better part of thirty years to come to terms with my hair. Things went wrong right from the get-go. My mother, who is from Venice, is convinced that she has Chinese ancestors courtesy of Marco Polo, because her hair is dead straight. This was a great source of dismay to my grandmother (the straight hair bit, not the Chinese ancestors - I don't think she knew about them) so when I was born, bald as a coot, she spent hours studying my scalp hoping for curls. My hair came in in tight knots, like my father's. My mother, brought up on the old system of a 100 brush strokes a day, hadn't the faintest idea of what to do with my tangle, and scissors to snip out knots became her tool of choice.

Being a teenager in the 60s, in the Marianne Faithful days when everyone, but everyone, had dead straight, shiny hair was tough. If you've never heard of Marianne Faithful, try to imagine a time when the only hair 'product' was hairspray in an aerosol can. No gels, no mousses, no conditioners, no relaxers, no flat irons or diffusers - just hairspray. Those of us with curly hair tried everything. We ironed it. We went to bed with scotch tape on our bangs to keep them flat. Tortured ourselves by sleeping in giant rollers. It worked - until you stepped outdoors into the never-ending English drizzle, and the perfect coiffe blew up into a frizzled fluff ball. It was mortifying.

And then came the musical, Hair! What a show. It took London by storm. All we frizzy heads came out of the woodwork, grew our hair and it didn't matter what it looked like, just as long as it was long and messy and parted down the middle. Parents hated it but who cared! Those were the days!!

As the years went by, my hair and I made peace. I grew it long. I cut it short. I came to love it as a reflection of my personality. When I learned that I would need chemo to treat my breast cancer, losing my hair was the first thing that popped to mind. Not in a scary way. More curious than anything. Just wondering if I'd look like I did in my baby pictures. Over the last two weeks I've let my three daughters take turns at cutting my hair. They did a great job and it was an interesting mother/daughter experience. It's good to tuck those away.

As I write, my hair is starting to fall out. Once you've had that second chemo infusion, the hair is done. Peter, my husband, is going to shave it off! Help!!