Flying High

Some days take a turn for the better and seems it happens when you’re not still looking. Stare at a day all day and will it to change and what do you get? The same day you started with. Get out, make plans, busy yourself with something other than that day you weren’t thrilled with and what do you know, you have a new day on your hands.

Yesterday I was sitting at a counselor’s office – the free one you get with the diagnosis – bemoaning the fact that I’m terrified of losing my hair not helped by the fact that the wig lady at the hospital doesn’t have any openings in the near future. Folks, the hair is dying on the vine, ready to drop at any moment, and this girl needs a wig. Stat. Hearing my frustration, my counselor told me of another place. I got up, dried my tears and called them on my way out. Within a half hour, I heard back. They could see me within the hour.

Stopping for fifteen minutes to inhale a few fish tacos at my very favorite westside hole-in-the-wall, I next found myself in their chair trying on the only blonde wig in the room. It’s got bangs and is cut bizarrely short, yet in its defense, it’s just a demo for color and fit, both homeruns. With it on, even with my own frayed dying rat tails for hair dangling underneath it, I felt oddly good, like someone had wrapped a warm, high quality blanket around me. Yes, I realize with this “do” you could call me Florence Henderson, give me a fried drumstick in each fist and send me off into my own Wessonality commercial, but the real wig’s hair will be longer and by the time it comes in, my own dead hair will be history. I feel bad for it as it’s tried so hard to hang in there with me and stay in the game, but it’s just had enough. We knew chemo kills hair and we were right.

Yesterday was a roller coaster ending on a high note meeting this woman who will help me finish out this hair chapter. I went to leave and she asked for a hug, like a mother pretending she needed it, but knowing it was me who did. She also had some health thing years ago and knows firsthand what it’s like to be on a hunt for hair. Not just hair, good hair.

Today I woke up with a plan. Feeling the matted clumps my hair has morphed into, barely hanging on yet now void of any life, I up and ordered the wig. Check. Later on I had tentative plans to see a movie with a friend, which I kept, and we ducked into the dark theater, each with our own bag of popcorn. Decadently perfect. I felt so normal to be carefree and out at the movies with a girlfriend. I am normal.

Returning home, I walked into the kitchen to the most divine smell. Another friend had said she’d make me a pot of her lovely kale white bean soup, and here it was, lovingly prepared, marvelously delicious and still warm, waiting for me in my refrigerator. Who gets this? Evidently, I do.

I’m beginning to trust how this all works. We inherently want to help each other and just need to know how or on the receiving end, need to trust that others will prop us up when we most need it. Need to ask them to and then let them. We can’t begin to presume how a given day will go, and there are nice surprises in store when we stop giving a day the reins and sit back only to watch it paralyze us. When you let people really see you, the sky’s the limit as to what you can accomplish, what you can give and what you can receive.

Lean into people if you need help, let them know how you’re stuck and what you need. We’re not here together to just fly solo when some days call for an entire fleet of copilots. Because sometimes there is turbulence.