"You are beautiful!"
How often has someone said this to you?
Not including you LOOK beautiful. That's different. You look beautiful implies an excellent hairdresser or a flattering, well-fitting outfit.
I'm talking about you ARE beautiful. You have beautiful features: a beautiful face, beautiful eyes, a beautiful smile. I'm talking beautiful in the way I described Keith, a beauty that cannot be diminished by poor dress sense or a naff haircut. Or by having no hair at all.
Pre-cancer, the number of times that I was given such a compliment could be counted on half a hand. Now, I'm running out of fingers. Particularly since going bald.
You really are beautiful! I'm told. You have a lovely face! Eyes! Smile! etc etc.
Dear friends, here is a word of advice. If you ever suffer an image crisis, not sure whether your appearance will pass muster in today's image-obsessed world, get the razor out. Shave off all your hair. If my experience is anything to go by, your friends will pour out the compliments. No expensive haircut has ever had quite the same effect.
My friends back up their compliments with valid-sounding reasons. They can see my face properly now that my head resembles a shiny ping pong ball, without any hair to distract their attention. Or they love the colourful scarves, making me look like someone who has not only made an effort but is ahead on the latest fashion.
On a good day, this is all very nice and reassuring, and I'm eager to believe every word. It puts an even bigger smile on my face and warmth in my heart. See, I think. I don't need Denise. She would only hide my newly discovered beauty.
On a bad day, I don't believe any of it. I merely suspect my friends of kindness. If I'd done the shaved-head-look a year ago, I think, without the excuse of cancer treatments, which requires said kindness, would the compliments be just as forthcoming?
Because if they were, wouldn't we all simply want to shave our heads? Why waste money on hairdressers?
I have discovered that there are two answers to What is it like to be bald?, depending on when you ask the question.
(a) On a good day, it's all very jolly. Part of me even relishes the opportunity to try out ultra-short hair, to see what my bald head looks like (I've always wondered), and to experiment with brand new styles involving scarves and hats. Without the cancer excuse, I would never have dared.
Now, I can be as outrageous as I like, and no-one will dare say anything (except my children, but they don't count, because looking embarrassingly awful/old/unfashionable is in a mother's job description). There are times when I genuinely feel very positive about life, and the mirror smiles back at me.
Those are the days when I search through my box of scarves with interest. Excitement even. What shall I try today? What outfits/scarves/earrings go together? I stand up straight. Look at me! Cancer, and still presentable! Hurray!
(b) But on a bad day, the same box of scarves induces despair. Everything look ridiculous. Can't be bothered with any of them. Give me a hat. But wait, that hat looks ridiculous too. And it's too hot. My shoulders are stooped.
When the doorbell rings, I shout "Someone open the door please!" because I don't want to see anyone, and more importantly, I don't want anyone to see me.
I end up on the sofa with a blanket over my head. Problem solved.
Whether it's (a) or (b) depends partly on how ill or tired I feel and partly on my general state of mind.
But hang on a minute, isn't that the same with hair? Those miserable days (especially the feeling-ill-and-tired-days) when you cannot be bothered to make your hair sit properly on your head, because you know that it won't? (Not today, anyway.) At least I don't have any such bad-hair-days now.
And the strange thing is that although I may feel so much less beautiful on a Bad Day, other people don't seem to notice the difference. Sometimes this is annoying.
"You are looking well!" they say, when I am feeling exhausted and miserable. What to do? Smile and say Thank you? Destroy their optimism and their valiant attempts at cheering me up with a Well sorry but I feel rotten?
I usually choose the Smile option. It's the best one, I think. No point in making others feel as miserable as I am feeling. And who knows, their positive comments may just be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I say That's nice to hear, thank you.
And looking at this picture of me and my sister, taken just a few days after the second lot of chemo (so on a Very Bad Day Indeed - I couldn't even string a decent sentence together), it's true that you cannot always tell from the outside how ill I feel. Although that may, of course, have been the loveliness of my sister rubbing off.
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| My sister and I, a few days post-chemo |
Let me tell you what my first weeks of baldness have been like.
1. Feeling the air on my head
It feels cold. No, it feels windy. No, it feels sweaty. It feels BIZARRE.
See, I just cannot describe it and I still haven't got used to it. I have a constant urge to put something on my head (soft hats are especially comforting), but then I want to rip the head covering off within minutes, annoyed with feeling warm and constrained. It's been musical hats and scarves. I am now trying to get used to wearing nothing on my head at all, at least at home.
I admit to looking at people in the street with renewed interest. Especially men with little or no hair. Don't they feel the need for a hat? Don't they have that constant urge to stroke their non-hair?
2. Having a shower
I never knew how much of my time in the shower was taken up with wetting, washing and rinsing my hair. I still step into the cubicle with my head bent, waiting for The Moment when my scalp (previously: hair) can get wet. I have the cleanest scalp in South London. I've been rubbing and rubbing it, lathering it with shower cream, just because I don't know what else to do with my hands.
I do enjoy my showers, though. The convenience of short-hair is nothing compared with this. It's not even Wash & Go anymore. It's just Go. Brilliant.
3. Scarves, hats and wigs
At home, I wear whatever feels most comfortable. That excludes Denise. I've got a couple of comfy hats (not all equally flattering) and am becoming a dab hand at tying scarves.
Sometimes, it needs something in-between. I turn the hat/scarf up and away from my ears, getting too hot. My daughters were in fits of laughter at one such attempt. The pixie haircut may have gone, but the upturned hat, they decided, made me look like a pixie. Looking at the picture they took, I can see they had a point.
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| The pixie look (Just be honest. Beautiful face? I think not) |
I am not obsessed with hiding my baldness, though. Yes, I wear a swimming cap in the pool, but that is to keep the earplugs firmly in place. I don't cover my baldness between the shower and the changing cubicle, and neither do I mind standing in front of the shared unisex mirror to arrange my headscarf.
If I meet a friend in the street or a colleague in the office who is interested in what my baldness looks like, I merrily whip off the scarf and show them.
Denise will, I fear, soon hand in her notice. If she does, I can't blame her. I tried her on recently, but having got used to my shorter-shorter-gone look, she just seemed ridiculous. I felt like I was wearing the top of a broom on my head. Too Much Hair. She may make me look inconspicuous, but she makes me feel very conspicuous indeed. Too self-conscious. Unlike my bald look, or my scarved look, I don't feel the wigged look is me.
The idea is, I think, that Denise is trying to be me. In truth, it feels as if I am trying to be Denise. She may be a convincing sister, but, much as I love my sisters, I don't want to be them.
Quite apart from the fact that she is uncomfortably tight and warm. Perhaps I can give her a job in the colder months... but then again, how much easier to toss aside a scarf than to toss aside a wig.
4. The Sudden Collapse in the shop
What is it about shops and sudden collapses?
Lacking a simple hat that doesn't look too much like an egg warmer, my courage failed me when I rifled through the racks. Perhaps it's the wrong time of year. Perhaps it's the wrong fashion. Everything was too hot/woolly/scratchy/fancy. But wait, perhaps this one... let me try it on...
Stop right there. Try it on? In a busy shop? That means taking my scarf off and coping with Stop And Stare. Why was that a cause for collapse, suddenly? For tears pricking at the back of my eyes?
I'm beginning to see a pattern here. It happens whenever I am suddenly faced with indisputable new evidence of my cancer. The rare occasions when I've bought a hat, it's because I wanted one. Now, it's because I need one for all the wrong reasons.
I felt lonely and miserable and utterly self-conscious.
Fortunately, I'd arranged to meet a friend for tea afterwards.
"Did you buy a hat?" she wanted to know. Well, no... I might have seen something suitable but didn't dare try it on.
"Where? Show me!" she ordered, dragging me along. And of course, when you have a friend with you, it's absolutely fine. Because then you can look in the mirror together whilst you rip off your scarf, and laugh together at the unsuitable hats, and impress on the anonymous shoppers (who are looking at you, surely, but you are definitely NOT looking at them) that everything is fine and dandy even though you have cancer.
That shopping episode was probably simply another hurdle to overcome. Having stood in a Public Place, bald and bold, made it possible to stand in front of the swimming pool mirror a few days later, calmly tying a scarf around my bald head.
I thought I could run, but I just needed to take small steps.
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| The hat shop. Crisis over. |
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