Windows & Mirrors
One of the hardest things to cope with during chemotherapy was also one of the greatest gifts. Hard to imagine that something so toxic could be benevolent but there it is.
It took one chemo treatment for my hair to begin to fall out. I remember the warm, early September day, driving with the window down. I ran my fingers through my hair and as I pulled my hand away, there were strands of hair between my fingers. There is a reality check that comes with that – you know it is going to happen but until you see the physical evidence you can still live in the world of denial where nothing like that will happen.
After the second treatment I lost the hair everywhere else on my body, which was a shock I had not really been prepared for. My primary focus was on needing a wig, head scarves, bandanas, and warm hats as the cold of winter would be setting in, and I spent at least 4 days out of 7 in freezing cold hockey arenas.
What really surprised me and turned out to be the gift was the loss of my eyelashes and eyebrows. The irritation of no eyelashes is real and proved to be a challenge. Eyebrows less so as makeup allowed me to at least create the illusion that they existed.
I had choices of course. If I left my eyes without makeup I looked like Little Orphan Annie on a good day if I had the wig on or a bright bandana. If it was just me walking around the house without anything on my head and passed a mirror I’d laugh because I looked like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family. There was very little I could do about the eyelashes but with shaded in brows, other makeup, the wig and attitude I made a difficult situation at least bearable.
The gift? Being able to see my eyes – the eyes I had always taken for granted. For the first time in my life, I actually saw my eyes. And I fell in love with them. Our hair is one of the first things people notice about us whether meeting us for the first time or by people we have known for a while. People notice when you get a haircut (or need one), or when you’ve changed your style. Prior to cancer, any time I would go through an unhappy or difficult experience, one of the first things I would change was my hair – the style, the colour, or the length, thinking it was a fresh start. When you are bald, it is the eyes that stand out and become the focus. There is such clarity with regard to the colour, the shape and the depth. You notice how the eyes smile when the lips do. How they deepen in anger and cloud with sorrow.
To this day when I meet someone for the first time, or I’m with someone I see on a regular basis, it is their eyes that I focus on. As trite as it sounds, our eyes truly are the window to the soul and the mirror to the heart. There is true, honest expression and emotion that we often miss when we focus elsewhere.
When was the last time you truly looked at your own eyes? What did you see?