On The Meaning Of Hair Revisited

It turns out I was wrong about being done. It's December, almost a year since my diagnosis, and my obsession with hair has continued. I feel compelled to search for its metaphoric significance. To answer the questions I haven't yet asked. And to understand ... simply understand the meaning of hair.

During chemo, I became bald everywhere. I developed a new empathy for shinned chickens. Not only my head hair, but eyebrows, lashes, and even chin hairs abandoned me. Arm pits became silken, and my arms and legs were smooth and bare. And yes, even my pubic hair fell out, leaving me feeling vulnerable and cold. More like a young child than a woman grown. It took me back.

I came into the world bald, and my parents feared I would remain that way. It would have brought further shame upon their house. Not only was I their second adopted baby, but a hairless girl. Clear evidence of failure on their part. Being a compliant child, anxious to please and hold my place, my hair eventually grew in thick and full. Later when it became unruly, I begged to have it thinned, but they were horror struck by the idea, and I capitulated without much protest. Thin hair was almost as bad as none at all and indicated something lacking. I just wanted to fit in, so I did what I was told. I was a horseback-riding, tree-climbing girl, and that was fine with my folks as long as I had a good head of hair.

In college, hair took on entirely new meaning. Hanging long and straight, it called up Joan Baez and songs of power and protest, swaying hips and warm southern nights. My dad said it looked stringy and flat, but by then I wasn't listening. I smelled the changes in the wind, like a whiff of sweet marijuana, and though I couldn't carry the tune, I wanted to sing along. My long hair gave way to a chemically-induced afro, women's consciousness raising groups, and power to the people. History recorded itself in beauty shops across the land.

All those years, I played with that thick head of hair without giving it a lot of thought. It meant power and femininity and choices and freedom. Also resilience and the ability to change on a whim. I took it for granted. Never dreaming that one day it would be gone. And on that day that I took my life in my hands and had my head shaved, I had no idea what a profound act that would be. How for me it would signify true power, separate from an attachment to hair. When I got home, after receiving Logan's proud words, "great head, Mom!" I went upstairs to the bathroom mirror. And I laughed. There stood a woman I did not know, a brave, bald-headed woman with tiredness and determination in her eyes. She looked back as if to say, "hey, I have no idea where this ride is going to take me, but I am ready, and so are you."

I had felt beautiful and sexy and lively with long (artificially) curly hair. Kirk loved that look, and suddenly he was compelled to extol my beauty when I had no hair at all. And despite those moments when I wished to be anonymous, I loved it when people said that I was courageous, a role model, a stepping into the world sort of person, even as I took time out to heal. I learned that my strength went beyond the color of texture or length of my hair. I learned to shed the fears and shame of my parents, to radiate my own beauty from within. To go with the flow even when the road took some mighty tight turns.

By its absence, I learned that hair meant warmth on cold nights and a sweaty neck on hot days. It could be gathered around for protection or flung back as an act of defiance. Baldness meant freedom from tangles and entanglements, car windows rolled down and nothing to blow in my face as I took curves at high speed. Freedom! To some it meant illness, to me part of a mysterious turn in the road - the-river-run-through-me. Hair meant something to swing and strut and feel sassy about. Baldness brought forth a dignity I did not know I had, along with those fantasies of Buddha, GI Jane, Gandhi, and fast swimmers surging through turgid water. In its starkness, my bald head shone.

My hair has grown, been cut back, and grown again, as reliably as the black berry bushes that creep up our bank. It has been bone straight, curly like Shirley Temple, and Afroed like Angela Davis. Most of my life it has been reddish brown, though I did turn it black once, and just the other week, in honor of Halloween, I sprayed it purple. After chemo, new hair sprouting signified a promise, buds surviving the winter, and curls that were chemically fertilized. Hair tightly sprung, like the pubic hair that was making its own come-back, causing my head to ache at times. New growth can be painful. It rapidly metamorphosed from small tight curls to a full-fledged 'fro. Memories of protest days coming full circle. Then about the time I acclimated to my new hip look, the curls began to loosen and lengthen, and the new crop came in straight.

Occasionally, I run into old friends who missed my Buddha days, and I hear myself talking to them about hair. Me, who got so sick of folks focusing on my head, wishing they would just come out and ask their hard questions instead. But perhaps I was being unfair, because now that I am well, it is something I want to talk about. That baldness was my red badge of courage, which I no longer wear. It alerted everyone, myself included, to the challenge I was facing, and it reminded me every time I looked in the mirror or felt a cold wind blowing across my head to stay present in the life while I had it. There were people who thought I was brave for refusing the wig or turban, and a few fellow travelers who threw theirs off as a result of my stance. I was empowered by their faith in me. And while I knew my bravery had nothing to do with hair, and that surviving was the tough part, I now appreciate the confidence those remarks gave me. Confidence to face the chemo needle, the cold slab of radiation, and the crotch-burning sensation in the CAT scan tube. As well as the on-going uncertainty that is the survivor's cross to bear. My strength comes, in part, from taking each step with the knowledge that people who love me stand nearby.

Nowadays when I look in the mirror, a sprightly middle-aged woman looks back. My hair has reasserted its straight self and become dappled with grey as if to herald more changes ahead. I have decided to keep it short for now but just long enough so that no one asks if it's a cancer "do". Sometimes I miss that shorn me who was clearer of purpose than I have ever been before or since. I miss her absolute calm and her almost unwavering conviction that she would prevail. It frightens me to give voice to that longing; "watch out what you wish for" screams softly in my brain. I do not miss the fatigue, the fear, or the pain. I am clear that I am not calling back my illness. What I am doing is calling forth that woman of quiet determination and inviting her to dance with me. Together we can make some mighty fine music.

As for the meaning of hair, I think it is simply to grow.