"Perception is merely reality filtered through the prism of your soul"-Christopher A. Ray
In preparation for my trip tomorrow morning, I went to get my hair cut and colored yesterday.
This is ritual that I go through every few weeks and it always fills me with a mixture of excitement and dread. Part of this is due to the fact that I have very fine, very thin hair that is hard to do much with. My wonderful hairdresser of the last 15 years or so works her magic on me and tries to make my sparse hair look full and lush.
As she got out her scissors to begin the process yesterday, I mentioned that I was ready to go a little shorter.
"Okay" she said, with a bit of a smirk on her face.
"You know, I am getting ready to turn 60 in a few weeks...and, I am thinking that a little change might be good," I nervously replied.
"Okay" she said again...smiling at me knowing of the angst that I go through with my hair.
Let the cutting begin.
After she did the "first round"...I looked at it and said, "Let's go shorter."
"Okay," she said, and happily got the scissors out again to continue trimming. (She has always thought that my hair would look better shorter...so, she was quite pleased with me at this point.)
"Oh, I don't know..." I said with a bit of panic in my voice. Maybe I should.... (confusion, trepidation and, even, fear being felt here...)
"Let's do it..." I finally expressed after going back and forth in my mind and making more of this than needed to be made.
For some reason this haircut became 'bigger than life' in my mind.
She continued to trim and snip as I sat there sweating.
Suddenly, my eye caught a reflection in the mirror of a lady across from where I sat. She looked a little older than I was and she had an empty look on her face. I continued to gaze at her as I realized that the hairdresser was using an electric razor on her very thin and straggly hair. He did this until every hair was shaved and she sat there with a completely bald head.
It seems as if this woman has been in three times in the last few years to go through this procedure...each time during her chemotherapy treatments.
My little haircut lost all of its importance at that moment...
...as I began to put things in the right perspective.
3 comments:
That really does put things in perspective, doesn't it. An empty look on her face...I remember when I was in the hospital for a length of time back in 1991, one of the ladies who came and did my plasmapheresis also worked at the big cancer hospital in Tampa.
She spoke of women who were at advanced stages of cancer, usually breast cancer, who got to the place where they couldn't or wouldn't speak for themselves any longer. They always had to have someone with them to help them expresss themselves. How sad.
I go to a hematologist regularly. I am sometime feeling low when I go, wishing I did not have to go, wishing I did not have my diagnosis. Then I see those around me with cancer, and I am thankful I only have a blood problem...
Oh Grammie, this post really got to me because, as you know, my 39-yr-old sister who's been diagnosed with stage 3 adenocarcinoma (lung cancer) is about to begin radiation and chemotherapy treatments and the docs have told her she WILL lose all of her hair! She has such pretty long brunette hair, but we are going to get her a wig just like her hair so she won't have to worry about that part. Makes me so sad...:-(
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