Pixie Cut

In some cultures cutting off your hair is a way to separate yourself from grief or loss.  Or maybe I made that up but I think my Mom said it to me once, and it has always made sense in a visceral way.  Piera used to cut my hair, long sweet morning (well, my morning, anyway) sessions with just my pajama pants on, sitting on the plastic chair in the sunny fenced back yard, big ole towel ‘round my neck, chatting away.  “Look up?”  “Now, look to the side.”  Over time she got really good at it and we bought her some special scissors.  As months morphed to years and dozens of haircuts, I sometimes felt bad – a hairstylist, in addition to the millions of other ways she supported me and kept me whole?  But those haircut times were always so sweet.  The rest of the day after a haircut she would evaluate me with a coolly professional eye.  “Damn, I did a good job.”  And she almost always did.  On the few occasions that she was busy and I went to a salon, she would be accusatory, jealous, even!  And they rarely made me look as good as she did.

Heart-burnt tree.
Joseph D. Grant County Park, San Jose.

So I got my haircut today (of course), found a place on Yelp and went in and asked for a Pixie cut in honor of my friend the Perfessor and the rarity of a blue moon.  The lady took her time, but there was no warm backyard chair or big bath towel, no appraising Piera eyes, no cat to flop around on the ground, no wind to blow away my fluff.  No Pixie cut either, and the clouds have covered the rare blue moon – just a short, short, short trim, the better to chase away grief with, I guess.  Curls shorn, I feel lost, cut off from one more connection, as I sit alone in the empty house tonight.  

In which I do not have cancer...

Today I got “The Call” but plenty of other women didn’t, or they did, but didn’t hear what they desperately wanted to hear.  And so in one sense my path split off from my sisters – the umpire swung his hands and hollered “safe!”  But I have seen the ugly underbelly, and I know that I am not truly safe.  Nor are you, or you, or you or you or you.  There is a kinship, still, and my bruises have not yet faded.   I won’t forget these days of sisterhood, bound by the breast, the needle and our curious vulnerability.  But I am glad, so relieved, such a deep unwinding, that going forward I have heartbreak, but I am not, right now, facing cancer.  

After I got The Call and staggered through the rest of my day, I asked if anyone wanted to go to dinner and my new friend Patti Berryhill said yes because she has to celebrate a new job and so we went.  Her boyfriend Steve was there and we all talked about how I don’t have cancer but do have a divorce (next time I’ll just get officially married, then, since a breakup like this is a divorce whether you got to have a big party with presents or not) and how she is going to make $6600 more a year with more vacation days but have a longer commute and it was nice to fold my troubles into the larger fabric of life.

Patti’s boyfriend is a musician so after dinner we wandered over to the Fox Theater where they have the Wednesday night Redwood City Blues Jam and went in.  Patti is very sweet and introduced me to all her friends, but mostly I sat and watched the musicians, which I love to do.  I love how they grimace and twitch and sway, hunch over, splay out, I love how the music comes through them so strongly that they could. care. less.  what they look like or if they are cool or sexy in any given moment.  And so for those moments, I didn’t think of anything but that, transported by those, themselves transported by music.

I will become someone different.  I don’t know who she will be, what she will like to do.  What hours will she keep?  When will she come home and what will home look like?  It’s not a huge concern of mine right now, but I am definitely kind of curious.  Right now it’s wine o’clock, as it has been for so many hours lately (oops).  I am cancer-free, to the best of my knowledge, and that’s all I need to know.

Sky, Edgewood County Park.
Photo by m. sachs martin (I can't make the accent on my laptop).

Kin

Here in biopsy never-never land, I feel certain kinships with all the other women who must be going through this (I feel kinship with everyone who has dealt with divorce, too, but We Aren’t Thinking About That Right Now).

It’s unnerving to know how many other women right now are driving, or writing, or working, or sleeping with their sweet, soft sacred breast gouged up and bruised by the biopsy needle.  Make no mistake about it, this is not a “feminine” process in the stereotypical pink fuzzy sense of the word.  It’s hard and gasping and bloody, it shoves and stabs and requires all your musculature to brace up on that table.  And how many women have how many left or right breasts aching quiescent or oozing blood under their polo or t-shirt or blazer as I write this?

And how many women are in the agony of hurry up and wait?  How many went through the undignified, unofficial support group in the Kaiser basement, us strangers in our gowns like kids outside the principal’s office, trading strategy and comfort while the radiologist called us in one by one and delivered either a pardon… or a detention to the next procedure?  How many are checking Facebook and email when we all know the news will come by phone, but it is restless and relentless, this need to know, to see, are we there yet, will I live?  News, is there news, any news yet?  Did anybody say something?  Can anybody help?

Deer behind barbed wire.
Edgewood County Park, San Mateo.  Yes, it's symbolism, ok?

And yes I know there’s a good chance it’s not cancer and even if it is there are many good options and choices.  I know that.  But with a bruised body and mind I can just sit, helpless and numb, while I wait, with my sisters, a legion of wonderers, an army of bruises, a worldwide wave of held breath until that phone call finally comes.

Wildness, redux

So maybe this is not just my quit-smoking blog, but my get-through-hard-times-generally blog.  And Where the Wild Things Are might refer to the wildness of grief and obsession as well as the lovely critters I see while hiking.

Sunny hillside with tarweed, Mount Diablo State Park.

A lot has changed since I last posted, but I am still quit of smoking.  It's a good thing, because I am awaiting biopsy results on a lump in my breast.

Sweet Georgia Brown is gone.  He died April 4th, 2012.

The other main thing that has changed is that Piera is gone, was gone, specifically, 7 days before this cancer scare.  And that is so large and wild of a hurt that I can't yet really post about it, especially not sitting here in this home that we shared until just a blink of an eye ago.

I was thinking about writing today, and the sentences in my mind were sort of scintillating and witty.  I had little jokes lined up about titty bling and frankenchi-chi.  But home in this House of Grief, no longer a House of Bun, I feel grimmer.

Women are coming out from everywhere to support me.  The Realtor, my clients, colleagues - something about what I am going through makes them want to share their experience, support, and strength.

My friends and family are carrying me through.  I am trying to skate lightly along the ugly underbelly of life and still hike and eat and care for my Leopard (who had major surgery on Wednesday - it's been that kind of week).

I don't want these times to rear up and grab me.  I don't, either, think I will come through unchanged.  Too much has happened for me to know how to pray in words, but I did kneel down and kiss the ground when I heard coyotes sing tonight.

Is there a prayer of your heart?  What does it say?

A year and a half passed, and then...