No Gray Area

There’s no gray area here.  My hair has reached a critical mass—a gray mass, that is.

My soft, straight, new hair of November has turned into my mess of thick, wavy, curly hair of January. 

Think Jay Leno, no, actually think Jay Leno, Lyle Lovett and Don King.  If I could morph all of their hair into one look, you would have a pretty good idea of what I wake up to every morning.

The Tonight Show

I’m not complaining.  It’s my hair, and I’m happy that it's growing back.  I just don’t know what to do with it. 

I started highlighting my hair in college.  A few foil highlights every six months. Once I started to see more than just a few gray hairs, my hair colorist (who had hair the color of Malibu Barbie—so, maybe she wasn’t the best choice for a colorist when I wanted subtle, blond highlights) tried to camouflage the gray with highlights.  It was a slippery slope.  Before I knew it, I was a blond—not in a good or even natural way.  A blond.  (For Wicked fans, think of Elphaba describing Glinda in Loathing as, “blond”).

Now my hair is wavier, grayer and thicker than it was before chemo.  Another one of the many ways that cancer is the "gift" that keeps giving.  Really?   Isn’t it bad enough that I had to lose my hair?  Couldn’t it just grow back the way that it was before?  

I miss my old brown and gray hair. 

As it grows in, I'm walking around with hair that looks like Jay Leno’s or maybe more like Daniel Boone’s coon skin cap.  I try to tame it with products and clips and hats.  They’re really no help.  I know that it has to go through the awkward growing out stage to get it to its pre-cancer length.  But with the curls and the gray, this growing out is more than awkward.  

There’s no gray area here.  It’s awful.

Maybe I need a coonskin cap like Daniel Boone

After years of not coloring my hair (partially because I was worried that hair color may be linked to cancer, ha!) and going gray gracefully, I have an appointment to have my hair colored next week.  I feel a little like I’m betraying my going gray gracefully friends.  But, I have to do it. 

I’m going with a friend to her hair colorist.  Her colorist who she has gone to for years.  Her colorist who once colored her mother’s hair.  Her colorist who referred me to my wig place.  “It’s where all the girls go,” he told my friend when she first told him about my cancer.  Her colorist who also told her to remind me way back last year that my hair loss “would only be temporary.”

He was right.  I can’t wait to meet him. 

I know that it really isn’t--but sometimes it still feels like it’s all about the hair.