I'm Losing It, My Hair That Is.

On an ominous night, 2 weeks after round one, my scalp started to feel strange, heavy and tingly. I awoke with dread. By the time I got into the shower and ran my hands through my short-do, the light friction of my fingers pulled the strands out in disheartening quantities. 

It was happening. I was starting to lose my hair. 

Immediately, I want it shaved off. I don’t need to lose it in clumpy stages or to hang on to scarce strands among a desert of baldness. (Gross.)

What is like for a man to shave the head of his high-school sweetheart, his prom queen, his bride? Well, I don’t know, but you could ask my husband.         

Bobby is a very stoic soul. It didn’t occur to me that shaving my head might be not only a traumatic experience for me but also for him. I imagine I know him well enough to accurately conjecture that he was thinking about how I was handling the situation as he passed the buzzer across my scalp, but a girlfriend implanted in my mind that shaving his wife’s head might be a little hard on him too. Fair enough. 

So on this night, as we were (quite literally) facing tribulation head-on, I attempted to lighten the mood. That is, after I stood at the bathroom mirror with a pair of scissors in my hand for 5 minutes, paralyzed from making the first chop of those few inches I had been maintaining for the last couple of weeks. After a big hug from Bobby and a frantic little yelp, I did make the first cut and just kept going until it was a very unevenly cropped mass, which surprisingly, didn’t look that frightening. 

Okay, cue lame attempt to be light-hearted: “Well Bobby,” I say, “I guess I don’t need my keys anymore…" (too long of silence while I try to build up the punch line suspense and he stares at me blankly)… "I’ve lost my locks.”
 

Out to the driveway we head (for ease of clean-up) with a chair and the clippers. A PJ-clad Little H followed behind, pulling on his rain boots by the door and trotting out into the action, as though this were a normal family activity. 

As Bobby passed the noisy buzzer across my scalp, which hadn’t been exposed since I was an infant, I had planned to look up at him and say, “I better not wear a turtleneck, I’ll look like a roll-on deodorant,” my second prepared bald joke that I had looked up online moments before we began. But I ended up not having the heart. 

The clippers were really loud and uncomfortable and I just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. (Bobby was keen on starting with shaving a mohawk and taking a picture, so I guess he was handling the situation just fine after all.)

Adding to the thrill of this enlivening experience, I live on the west coast of Los Angeles: our neighbors are close and plentiful. The loud buzz of the shaver drew them to their windows like rubberneckers to a freeway accident and a small audience gathered to mortify me with their interest. Fabulous, now I get to be “the really weird butch chick” who just moved in across the street.

So yes, in summary, my husband shaved my head in the driveway while my son stomped around in the hair in his rain boots. Just another normal evening…