grooming lessons

Most of my life I had crazy thick hair. These two shots, taken over 30 years apart, I submit as evidence.

I would brush out enough to stuff a pillow every other day, and the loss was never visible. But during chemo, all my follicles closed up shop, as you may recall, and I got an answer to that question that comes up when you are brushing your teeth and checking yourself out in the mirror, about what your scalp looks like under that lush mane. Might you have a birthmark up there, maybe in the shape of a heart? Or Block Island. Or, god forbid, Florida.

Turns out there's nothing at all up there, except that little scar from the tin can Kevie threw at me by accident. The suspense about the scalp unveiling was over very quickly, and I was eager for a 6-month shadow to appear.

Some hair came back, staggering across the smoky battleground waving a tattered flag; white of course. But lots of follicles just couldn't handle all that poison, and they up and died on that battleground. My hair is so thin now.

Yesterday Laura and I got caught in the rain while walking our loop. I felt the cool rain on my head, felt it slide down my forehead, then into my eyes. I said, "Close your eyes, La, and just feel the sensation of the rain hitting your scalp." I expected her to be feeling the same kind of gratitude for the heaven-sent coolness on an insanely hot day. But she said, "Um, it hasn't gotten through to my scalp yet, hon." Suddenly the sensation wasn't as soothing.

Ever since chemo, Laura has been my groomer, just like these guys. If she doesn't do a little fluff here and there every few hours, little crop circles have formed and there are vast swaths of corn plowed under. You could for sure see that Florida birthmark if it were there. There just isn't enough hair to cover the whole scalp. It's like twin sheets on a queen-sized bed. What those sheets are doing out in the cornfield, I just can't explain. I guess that's part of the mystery of crop circles.

There is an old saying: "Give a man an ear of corn and he eats for a day. Teach him how to plow a field, and he can eat for life."* Actually, I think it's something about teaching someone how to fish, but I simply cannot and will not bring fish into the queen-sized bed out in the cornfield. Regardless, now that Laura is away so much of the time, she is worried that I am showing up in counseling sessions with crop circles on my head. She has decided I need to learn to cover my baldish spots on my own, and has been teaching me how my hands should move along the back of my scalp in order to hide the thinner spots. Fluff, fluff. I can't see it, but she points out where the crop circles tend to appear. Fluff, fluff. It's a lot like tossing a salad. On the back of my head.

*AND make crop circles