Cancer just sucks.

"Take time with a wounded hand, 'cause it likes to heal" 

sang Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots in 1992.  STP were known for their metal-leaning hard rock.  I wouldn't have called myself a fan, necessarily, but I didn't turn the radio off when their stuff came on, either.

That line, 'take time....to heal' is something that's on my mind.

I wrote a while back about my hairdresser, and his struggles with cancer.  A battle that he was losing, slowly.  The beast won the battle just a few days ago, and the wound of his passing is still very raw.  

He and I had been playing a merry-go-round game of 'cancel the appointment' for a few months.  He cancelled on me because he wasn't up to cutting hair.  I cancelled on him when I had a miserable head cold, and knowing his immune system was weakened, I didn't want to expose him to the germs.  He cancelled on me again a week or so later.  We'd been having a game of phone tag, where I left him a message, he'd leave me one, and we hadn't talked for about 2 or 3 weeks when I heard of his death.

The last message he left me (which I hope I will always be able to remember) went something like this: "Lucy, its C.  I'm sorry about not getting to you, but I'm just not having a very good time.  We'll get you in before you leave.  I'll talk to you soon."  I didn't call him back, worrying that if I did, he'd feel pressured to....hell, I don't know.  I wish I had called him, because I didn't really have a chance to say goodbye.  Not that I would have known I was talking to him for the last time.  He wasn't keen on a big emotional scene, anyway.

I didn't find out about his death until 3 or 4 days after it happened, and I was not surprised that he had passed, but saddened that I hadn't heard sooner.  As I had known would happen, the job of telling both of my sisters (they of the opposite coasts) and my mother of his death fell to me.  I did not make it through even one of those phone calls without breaking down and crying.  The hardest was my NYC sister.  She had not heard either, and it broke my heart to be the one to break the news to her.

You might be reading this and wondering why so much sturm und drang over the death of a hairdresser; but he was so much more than that to me.  Friend, artist, teacher, fellow liberal, collector of off-color jokes, a real character.

After that last phone message he left me, I called someone else I know that cuts hair and asked her if she could trim my hair for me.  I had been putting off doing that, knowing if he called me on a day that he felt up to it, and I was to show up with my hair pre-trimmed, his feelings would have been very hurt.  I put it off by trimming it myself around my face, to keep it out of my eyes, even though cutting your own hair is generally not a good idea unless you know what you're doing.  I don't.  But I figured me hacking at it would be less hurtful to him than actually seeing someone else.

Two days after I heard of his death, I had the appointment with the someone new.  DH told me that he was surprised that I had someone else do my hair so quickly after his death, but I'd had the appointment for more than a week, and I'm leaving in 9 days, so I went.

No one has cut or colored my hair besides C in 15 years.  No joke.  

I spent the entire appointment with the new hairdresser blinking back tears.  Every thing she did, everything she touched, brought back memories of conversations I'd had with C, every discussion about cut and color and dyes and products reminded me of something else he'd done.  I always liked the way that C washed my hair.  Don't ask, I can't describe why what he did was different than any other hairdresser, it just was.  He moved through 4 salons in those 15 years, and never varied at all the way he set up his station, laid out his scissors, washed hair, put the color in.  My hairstyle and color changed drastically, and clothing styles altered too, techniques for coloring and cutting hair went on a roller-coater ride from grunge to highly styled in that time, but the methodical way he worked through each client was consistent.

He had a gentle voice for someone as tall as he was, and a very slight tinge of his native Arkansas could be heard every now and then in his speech.

I was looking for something upbeat to put as my Facebook status that also was meaningful, something that my friends would know I was still thinking about him, and I found something by Thomas Campbell that seemed to fit, and I will leave you with it.  (n.b., I have no idea who the bloody 'ell Thomas Campbell is, but I like the sentiment.)

To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.

He touched the hearts of many.  I will miss him something dreadful.

Haircut

As a child, and even long into adolescence, I had really, really long hair. My dad thinks that little girls should have long hair, and since I was terrified of disappointing him, even as a rebellious teen, I never cut it until after I was legally an adult. There's a couple of pictures on my myspace page of what it looked like when I was 17, before I began changing the color and length.

No matter what I did, it always grew into a V shape down my back. Hacked off at an even length, by six weeks later, it would be back into that V. Drove me nuts.

The first time I cut it, I cut seven inches off of it, and still had long hair. I constantly toyed with the idea of getting it cut really short, but never did. When I met DH, (in 1994) it was long enough to sit on. He is a fan of super-long hair, and I left it long for a while because he liked it.

I hated it. I always hated it. Long, lacking the natural curl that both of my sisters inherited from my mother's side of the family, it was too thin to hold a curl for more than a minute, too mousy for my tastes and just dull.

About four months before our wedding, (in 2000) I cut it to shoulder-length, a manageable length, but still long. DH was annoyed, I was ecstatic. It no longer took almost a half hour to dry. That was also about the time that I began making the color lighter. Not quite blonde, but with definite blonde streaks. I've never liked my natural hair color, ever.

One day, while working for the big ol' bank, I looked around and realized that the women who were where I wanted to be, the power brokers, they didn't have long hair. They had short businesslike styles, easy to manage, but not long.

I cut mine into a shorter bob, very practical, but still long enough to pull into a ponytail, or put into a french twist, or a stern bun. I finally stopped playing with blonde highlights and went fully blonde. I'm far more confident as a blonde. DH will tell you "She's bitchier, too." I don't think so...but maybe that confidence comes off as arrogance. I don't care. I like it blonde. And there it had stayed for the last six years or so.

Until about two weeks ago, when I cut it short. Short, short. I can no longer pull it into a pony. When I washed it for the first time after getting it cut, I was shocked that there's nothing left to pull the shampoo or conditioner through. There are layers cut into it, but it is so short! And so cute! It looks a bit like the link. I look nothing like that, but the hair is similar. Or maybe like this, without the bangs. And not red. It is fuller with the shorter style, that thinness somewhat disguised by the layers and bounce that it has now.

So much else in my life is spinning out of control. My hair, though, is still mine to do with as I wish, and I have control over that. I wanted to cut it all off, into a man's style, and dye it black to match my mood, but reason prevailed. I'm far too pale to have black hair, I'd look like I was ill. So instead I went lighter blonde than it had been. My hairdresser suggested a brighter hair color for a brighter outlook. Great idea, but it isn't working. :-)

I'm thinking about the connections that society makes between women and their hair. Remember Eve, the model who shaved her head and had a dragon tattoo on her skull? Or how about Sinead O'Conner? What I remember most about the two of them is the comments from everyone in my Midwest conservative community, who thought that they looked awful.

I have a few male friends from my school days who are bald now. It takes a certain physique to be able to rock that whole Vin Diesel look, but my two friends pull it off pretty well. It is all right for men to be bald, but women, oh, no, that's another story.

Our femininity, and our sense of self, is very wrapped up in our self-image, which includes our hair. We're taught, at a very young age, about what girls should and should not look like, what they should and shouldn't do with their hair. Very few of my female schoolmates had short hair. Which makes me sound like I went to high school in some subdivision in the 1950s. I didn't; I'm not that old.

I love my super-short cut, but I'd happily hack it all off to avoid having to fuss with it. The price I pay for the shorter style is more time messing with it in the mornings, it now must be dried and styled, a little bit, to look presentable. No more tying it back while it is still soaking wet.

And it is a right pain in the ass at the gym, being too long to stay out of my eyes and too short to tie back. I'd wear a headband or some other such thing, but I end up looking like Hillary Clinton, circa 1996, if I wear headbands.

After wearing it this way for about two weeks, I'm tempted to go back to the hairdresser and have him cut a little more off, and make the color more radical, but at that point it would be just change for change's sake and that's not going necessarily a good idea either.