This story was written by Sharon B, one of the narrators in GOOD PEOPLE: Stories from the Best of Humanity:
It’s a bright day in St. Louis, Missouri, a few days before my older son’s wedding. Soon, we’ll be sitting at banquet tables festooned with bouquets, blitzed by champagne and twinkle lights, tearing up the dance floor in our flouncy dresses and tailored suits, bow ties and blowouts.
Right now, however, we’re at a taco joint, just hanging out, brushing chip dust off our laps, yukking it up over carnitas and guac. It’s 90 degrees Fahrenheit—Coca-Cola weather—so, I get up from the table and beeline for the vending machine. As I pause to fish coins out of my purse, a lady sitting with her friend at a nearby table calls out—“Girl! I love your haircut. It’s so cute!”
I laugh ruefully. “It is!” The friend insists. She tells me I’m “brave.”
At this point, my hair’s maybe half an inch long, close-cropped, like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby. Unlike Mia’s, my haircut wasn’t part of a larger story in which I’m manipulated into the arms of the devil. Not literally, anyway. But I’d definitely endured a certain kind of hell.
Still, these ladies don’t know that. They think I’m edgy, cool, brave, and I feel compelled to set them straight. “Thank you,” I say. “But I can’t take credit for this haircut. It was just kind of handed to me on a [expletive] platter.”
I was diagnosed just under a year ago, at 53. No kids in the house—they’d all fled the nest at that point. It was just me, my husband, and our new, possibly homicidal roommate, triple-negative breast cancer. This new roommate didn’t pay rent; instead, it took a toll. Security, self-esteem, sanity, strength: Every day, every hour, cancer came to collect.
In light of this life-altering news, you might have expected my first question to have been something more profound than “A I going to lose my hair?” I’ve since learned it’s pretty common—I mean, as a first question—especially among women. Because it’s not just hair, right? It’s part of who we are.
When I was a kid, my hair was my crowning glory. This was back in the 1970s, so picture Jan Brady: parted down the middle, stick-straight, super blond—so long that at one point I could sit on it. I was the youngest, so my mom babied me a bit, brushing it, braiding it, matching my ponytail holders to my outfits. I was so proud. In a way, losing my hair meant losing that girl—a beloved part of myself to which I’d been tethered by literal strands, each one now about to fall out.
Two weeks into chemo, my hair was everywhere—my shoulders, my pillowcase, the couch, the floor. Little traitors, abandoning ship just when the sailing got rough. I was determined to regain some sense of control, take matters into my own hands (plus, all that hair was gross), so I called up my daughter-in-law.
At the time, she and my son lived close by. He was in the Navy, and my daughter-in-law is in charge of keeping his hair cut short. I didn’t want a stranger to be the one to cut my hair, so I asked her if she’d be willing to do the honors—to come aboard as barber in chief.
“Lexi,” I said over the phone. “Today’s the day.”
Hours later, we were in my kitchen: the onetime locus point of a thousand chaotic mornings, countless hurried breakfasts, sandwiches rolled into tinfoil, high chairs taken in and out of storage. I sat in a chair. Lexi put a sheet on the floor. She shaved my head right there, starting at the front and buzzing a path over the top of my head. Blond hair drifted to the floor. A moment of silence.
“You look just like Ben Franklin,” my husband said at last. And just like that, we were all laughing.
Lexi wadded up the sheet and kicked it out the back door. I just sort of sat there, feeling my head—delaying the inevitable. Finally, I got up, went to the living room, and looked in the mirror. They let me have my space. I cried. Then, we had dinner.
A few weeks after chemo ends, once your body clears it out of its system, you start getting this peach fuzz. By the time my son’s wedding rolled around, my peach fuzz had graduated into something resembling a buzz cut. Thank goodness, the cancer was kicked, but so was my hair. To me, it felt like a flashing neon arrow: CANCER. So, for the day of the wedding, I resolved to wear a wig. True, it would be itchy and uncomfortable, but the last thing I wanted to do was draw attention to myself and potentially bum people out. This day was about the bride and groom, not the gloom and doom.
Anyway, I end up explaining all this to the ladies at the taco joint. The whole damn saga just came pouring out. I’m crying. They’re crying. I mean, sometimes, when I picture it, I can’t help but laugh. (Three random ladies bawling like idiots while salsa music plays in the background? Admit it, it’s funny.)
But here’s the thing: Those women stood their ground. Absolutely refused to budge on the main point. My haircut is so cute. Truly! They loved it.
A couple years after the wedding, that restaurant closed down for the pandemic. When they reopened, I experienced this surge of joy, like, Oh good, I’ll see those women again! But I’m not going to see those women again. And even if I did, I wouldn’t recognize them. They wouldn’t recognize me. It was just, you know, this moment in time. That impacted us. Impacted me.
It’s a moment I remember fondly every time I look through my son’s wedding photos. There I am, “cute” haircut included. Which is to say, I didn’t end up wearing a wig that day. Thanks to those ladies, I had the confidence to go without it.
Excerpted from GOOD PEOPLE: Stories from the Best of Humanity, National Geographic (September 3, 2024)