Because it got so cold yesterday, I broke out one of my knitted winter hats, which made me think of my mother, and not just because whenever the temperature dropped below 70 degrees, she would call me to ask, “Do you have a hat? And gloves?”
After my Mom was diagnosed with cancer and began chemotherapy, she’d started losing her hair. This was especially upsetting because my mother, for pretty much her entire life, had never even cut her hair. For my mother and her two beloved sisters, going to a salon was considered vain and a waste of good money. Instead, all three women, as their mother had done before them, had braided their hair and then wound the braid into a neat bun, using many hidden, dagger-length hairpins, the kind which could at times set off the metal detectors at airports. The three Klahr sisters (their maiden name) all looked equally elegant.
As the chemo progressed, I located a wonderful man who cut and styled the hair on many Broadway shows. He generously arrived at my mother’s apartment, to minimize the trauma, and he basically shaved my mother’s head. She’d already visited the small boutique at the hospital, which offered magenta polyester turbans and helmet-like frosted wigs. This wasn’t my mother’s style, so instead I provided her with an array of knitted caps, beanies and baseball caps with the logos of not-for-profit theaters (which was my version of baseball.) She made a careful selection; turning her medical ordeal into a shopping experience was a good idea.
After the chemo ended, my Mom’s hair grew back, thicker and lustrously silver and shockingly curly. The hairstylist returned and sculpted the curls, and I watched as my mother shyly admired her extremely flattering new do, using a hand mirror. My Mom had never had short hair, or anything that could be considered a hairstyle, and she was amazed and delighted. “Why didn’t I do this before?” she wondered aloud, turning her head this way and that. It was like watching a Mormon girl with her first corsage, and it was especially nice to see my Mom smiling, after what she’d been going through.
So yesterday, I wore one of the hats my Mom had favored. She’s gone now but I’m sure that, wherever she might be, at least she knows that, because it’s December, I have a hat.
December 9, 2013
