Yesterday I had lunch with a friend, and afterwards we walked across the street to my favorite coffee shop. While we waited for the barrista to make his mocha and my chai, I browsed the community bulletin board.
A flyer caught my eye. It said, “Fundraiser Cut-A-Thon May 2nd.” It offered haircuts at a local salon for a suggested donation of $7.00 At the bottom it said, “All proceeds will go to a cosmetology student that is batling cancer.”
I took a flyer and showed it to my friend. “I should do this,” I said.
“But what about your chemo curls? They’re great!” he said. “Maybe you could just give a donation and skip the haircut.”
I nodded, and stuck the paper in my purse and moved on. He was probably right. I shouldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t go through with it. Could I?
After losing my hair to chemo two years ago, I am extremely attached to my hair now. My curls are sometimes unruly and uncooperative, but I love them. I really do. They are my equivalent of a red badge of courage. They are at once a symbol of my loss as well as my reward for surviving arduous months of cancer treatment.
My friend Lauren had chemo for lung cancer, and when her hair started to grow back, she let it grow. And grow. And grow. Her curls were unruly, too, but she wouldn’t let anyone with scissors near her head. “I worked too hard for these,” she used to say. “I’m not cutting a single inch.”
That’s the stand I took, too. Until this morning, when I studied the flyer while I was drinking my coffee.
Could I do it? Could I part with these curls that have taken blood, toil, sweat and tears – and 24 months of my life – to grow?
I thought about what my friend said, that I could just give money and not get my hair cut. But I realized that giving money wouldn’t be any sacrifice. It wouldn’t cost me nearly as much as a hair cut would.
David’s words when he was offering an expensive sacrifice to God echoed in my mind, “I will not give that which costs me nothing.” (my paraphrase)
So I drove to the salon in downtown Gresham, handed over my contribution to the fundraiser, sat down in a barber’s chair, and I let the stylist cut my precious curls.
While she was cutting, I thought about the last time I was in a hair salon, getting my hair cut. It was two years ago, April 2007. When I fould out I was going to be having chemo, I decided to get my long blonde hair cut preemptively so I could donate it to Locks of Love. If I couldn’t have long hair, at least some child going through chemo could have a wig of beautiful blonde hair.
Three of my friends showed up at the salon to lend moral support. I teared up as they were taking pictures of me pre-haircut, with my long blonde hair still attached.
One of my friends slipped out, went to a wine shop next door, and bought a bottle of champagne. She returned with the bottle and four plastic glasses. We popped the cork and had a toast. To my hair, I said. What I really meant was, Here’s goodbye to the life I used to love. Remember this moment, in case I don’t ever get it back.
To your hair, they said as we charged our glasses. Cheers.
Three glasses of champagne later, my long hair was gone. Staring back at me in the mirror was an androgenous face with hair cropped short like a 12-year-old boy, I thought. I laughed and cried at the same time. It was too profound a loss to be controlled by any single emotion.
While I was getting my hair cut today, the cosmetology student with cancer came in. Her tall, thin, beautiful, 19-year-old frame was folded into a wheelchair. She was wearing latex gloves and a surgical mask. She’s going through chemo for liver cancer, but she hasn’t lost her hair yet. It’s long and straight and blonde. Like mine used to be.
I smiled at her when her mom wheeled her into the salon. “I’m Sarah,” I said. “I had cancer two years ago, and I survived.”
I recognized the vacant, exhausted, going-through-cancer-treatment look in her eyes.
And then, for a few fleeting seconds, I saw them brighten with an expression that was more precious than any amount of money, more valuable than all my hard-earned chemo curls.
It was a glimmer that looked for all the world like hope.
