Finding Womanhood

Dr. Tauer’s appointment schedule is shot. I wait with moist hands, survey the exam room, focus on dirt accumulated on the baseboards, and glance at the Holy Bible placed on a nearby table next to pamphlets arranged like a deck of cards. Women wearing colorful head scarves and wigs are on the cover of a small catalog. An anatomic chart shows a frontal view and cross-section of a woman’s healthy breast: nipple, milk ducts, fatty tissue, and muscle. I cup my right breast, still tender from recent surgery. I nursed my babies. This wasn’t supposed to happen. So much for statistics…

Dr. Tauer knuckle-taps the door, steps inside, and sits on a low stool; knees touch knees, warm hands cover cold hands.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” he says. “But you are healthy.”

Other than having cancer, I think. I appreciate his compassion, but I just want to get on with things. I want to go home.

“When you come in for your first treatment next week,” he continues, “you’ll have labs done first, and then on to the chemo room…” I knew all this from being a nurse, so I sort of tuned out. “…and you’ll have side effects…”

Yes, get on with it. I want to go home

“…and you will lose your hair.”

I zero in on his Brooks Brothers tie, dotted in navy, knotted even and tidy.

“Love your tie,” I say, as he glances at my life on his computer.

*   *   *   *   *

I bring my face close to the bathroom mirror. My eyebrows are my best feature: low maintenance, nicely arched, no rogue hairs, no sparse areas to fill in like old ladies do with unsteady hands, drawing wobbly, thick lines in Maybelline black.

Faint lines radiate from the skin around my eyes. I smile and the lines squint and deepen, but they aren’t too bad. Given the circumstances, I’m looking pretty good. A woman’s neck gives away her age, but mine is still smooth with just a little droop under the chin. Nothing that a dab of moisturizer won’t hide.

I raise my shoulders, take a deep breath, and pick up the expensive hair brush I bought a couple of months ago at a salon. I attack my scalp, brushing hard. Harder. Thin strands gather in the bristles.

After dividing my hair into sections, I pull each section taut, cut 2-3 inches, moving from section to section. Angry, curt scissors clip, blade against blonde. Swatches drop in the sink. Laying the scissors aside, I inspect my work in the mirror.

I look like Cate Blanchett when she played Queen Elizabeth and chopped off her hair.

No, I look like someone with a very bad haircut...

“Honey, I’m through with the preliminaries,” I call to my husband, Tom. “Just wait ‘til you see step one to a hair-free life.” I put my hands over my face and peek through my fingers as he walks into the bathroom. Dropping my hands, I burrow my face into his chest.

Leaning over the sink, I stare at the shiny drain stopper. My husband guides his whirring beard trimmer over my scalp. Dark stubble from my roots scatters on creamy porcelain.

I hope my head is a pretty shape, without too many knots. Daddy always called me a knot-head.

The whirring stops. I raise my head and look up at Tom. His eyes are edged with tears.

*   *   *   *   *

I crawl into bed shy and tentative, like a bride on her wedding night. Will my lover touch me? Will I please him? Even though the rest of my body is covered with cotton and lace, baldness imparts a feeling of nakedness. I turn on my side away from him, clutching the corner of our quilt, trembling. He pulls me in close and strokes my bare head as he would if my blond tresses were spilling over his hands.

*   *   *   *   *

I sit around a table with five other women going through various stages of cancer treatment. Scarves, wigs, and hats reflect our individuality. I’ve arrived bald, sparkly earrings dangling, wearing a peasant top reminiscent of the sixties, embracing a bit of a rebellious spirit I had secretly wanted when I was younger.

We talk about how we looked before our appearance was altered by the benevolent poison. Laughter and moments of silence mirror the way we feel inside. I describe my pre-cancer hair:  blown-dry, hot curlered, gelled, hairsprayed, and teased on top if humidity threatened to flatten it. Growing up–even as an adult–part of me thought a Southern woman’s identity was in her hair.

We each have our own tabletop mirror, various samples of foundation, concealer, eye shadow, blush, powder, mascara and brow pencil. Volunteers from the American Cancer Society give us tips for applying cosmetics while dealing with the visible signs of chemotherapy treatment.

I begin applying a lighter color of makeup along my jawline, blending it to match the pale color of my skin; a low red blood cell count has robbed me of rosy cheeks.

Oh, my Lord. I peer into the mirror and realize that most of one eyebrow is gone. A lone misshapen eyelash, resembling a small spider’s thin leg, is dangling from a top eyelid. Short, stubby lashes on the other eye are all that remain half-way across the top and bottom lids.

Brows, usually my best feature, have lost their arch. To create a natural look is a challenge. I pick up a pencil as though it were a paint brush and apply a light brown shade with gentle strokes. I call one of the volunteers over to help me.

775713_10152119807977952_1675942785_o(1)“I am afraid I’m going to mess up!” She chooses a darker brown, guides my hand with hers, and we apply it carefully, a light touch to avoid an obvious line. With only a little bit left to work with, I add as much color and beauty as possible, typical Southern woman that I am.

*   *   *   *   *

I stored my shaved hair in a Ziplock bag and tucked it away in an old cookie tin, my treasure box, to keep it as a remembrance. Every now and then, I take the tin down from a shelf in my bedroom’s wardrobe and look at the hair that was scattered in the sink on that day when I felt bereft of femininity.

I imagine someday sitting on the side of my bed next to a granddaughter with the treasure box resting on her lap. Perhaps she will lift the lid and giggle or gasp when she spies the baggie. I will tell her why I kept it, my story of hair lost, but life gained, strengthened by God, family, and friends.

I will run my fingers through her baby-fine hair and hope she’ll grow into a strong woman like me.

*   *   *   *   *

The black-and-white photo of Lisa, above, is by Cellar Door Photography, Memphis, TN.

Lisa bio YAH

Mama, Pause.

“Go where they can’t find you,” she charged, and I fled to the cover of pine forest. Head down, heart pounding, I parted from the others and passed groups of children–the buzz of their giggling mixing with the light rain. I looked up briefly to scan faces. My own girls were not present, thank God. That would have been the end of this experiment in solitude. “Mama!” they would call. “Mama!!” more insistent if I did not answer the first time. “Mama!!!!” and I would once again be swept up into my routines of responding, all the constant demands, the pressure, the noise.

10415878565_3e40478198_oTwenty minutes. I just needed twenty minutes away.

I scanned the edges of the path and saw a row of faded red cabins stationed along the tree line. Here? Or should I keep going? These were unfamiliar woods and I didn’t know where everyone else was headed. But what if there were people staying in these cabins? No, they looked empty, alone like I longed to be. I just needed to decide quickly–already I could hear the crunch of gravel, moving in my direction. Just decide. Decide.

Slipping off the path, I  jogged to the backside of a particularly abandoned-looking structure and crouched on the porch behind a low wall. Voices swept down the path I had just left, and I wondered if someone would make a turn for the woods and see me there, hiding. I pressed myself into the corner, back against the wall, and felt dampness seep through my jeans. Darnit. I was sitting in wet pine needles, but there was nowhere else to go. I closed my eyes, wishing them all away.

* * * * *

We were in the woods for a church retreat, the first retreat my small urban church has taken in the ten years I’ve been there. I was surprised by how many people signed up–when retreats had been proposed in the past they were quickly shot down with protests:

Nuh huh, I do not do spiders.

Do you really want to get eaten by some bear?

And my personal favorite:

Don’t you know there are crazy people in those woods? And no one, I mean No One, will even hear you scream.

But by some miracle there were seventy of us gathered for this weekend away. Granted, the hotel-like lodge and cottages represented the near-opposite of roughing it. The buildings were clean and new with sparkling bathrooms and spacious common areas.

The problem (for me) was that they were also full of people, and because the dorms were single-sex, I had the girls on my own. On the drive to camp, I had tried to explain my unease to my husband.

“I don’t want to do this,” I said, and he looked at me, confused. “Do what?” I stared hard at the highway, groping for the right words. “People,” I tried, “I can’t take this many people right now. Meals in the dining hall. Sleeping in dorms. Large group gatherings. Small group discussions. I, I… I just don’t want to be here. I’m not sure I can do this.”

It was mid-May, and the month had been full of marathons, figurative and literal. The school year was almost over, and every moment away from the kids was filled with summer preparations and other responsibilities. I was on overload–a lot had taken place, but I hadn’t had time to process it all. This combination is difficult for anyone, but murder for an introvert like me.

It’s like this: imagine my introverted brain as a water pipe building up internal layers of calcification. Any kind of stimulus–people, events, emotions–are the calcium deposits. As long as I have time to deal with them as they come–silence, journaling, walking, prayer–they don’t build up. But if I don’t, if they just keep coming, then the pipe gets clogged.

And when the pipe gets clogged I can’t think anymore. Or make good decisions. Or live with seventy other people and my kids in dorms, and discuss God or church or each other’s lives or whatever it was we were going to talk about all weekend.

However.

When you’re driving to camp with a trunk packed full of sleeping bags and two excited children jabbering away in the back seat, what you think you can do is no longer terribly relevant.

* * * * *

When our speaker introduced the weekend’s theme I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “This weekend,” she said, “we are going to talk about solitude.”

Pulling out a book by one of my favorite writers, Henri Nouwen, she defined solitude as being alone with God and hearing that you are loved. If we didn’t take this time, she warned, we would try to find affirmation in the shifting sands of human relationships. If we didn’t begin with solitude, we could never find authentic community because we would always be trying to find our identity in other people. You need to get away, she said, and listen to the voice that has been speaking to you all along.

“So go”, she said, “Twenty minutes of solitude. Go where they can’t find you.” And she released us into the woods.

There at my faded red cabin, back pressed up against the low wall, it took a long time for my heart to stop thump-thumping in my chest. It took longer for my breathing to slow, and it took longer still for my thoughts to settle. By now I was crying, all the emotion of the month pushing out of me slowly. My mind was churning, but I didn’t have the energy to fight it anymore. I just sat and stared into the woods.

After a long time I noticed the swamp cabbage lining the creek bed. The leaves looked over-sized, like a prehistoric display in a museum. Suddenly, a bird chittered ten feet above my head. I laughed with surprise. The smell of the wet pine needles lifted up on a small breeze, and I breathed in a deep draught of humid air.

1114159624_705676c9a9_oThe pipe was beginning to clear; there was room now to take it all in. There was room now to let some things go.

I remembered our speaker’s words: Solitude is being alone with God and hearing that you are loved. I grinned and spoke to the sky, “You have anything you want to say?”

There was no response, but that was okay. I already knew.

 

Photos by Ed Suominen and Sharon Mollerus