hair gone

I heard the door open and shut. I can't mistake the sound of my love coming home. I look forward to that sound all day. 

He's let in the cat, or maybe he's let the cat out; hard to tell, but the boys are making a fuss of it all. I breathe out slowly. I've remembered what we agreed had to be done today. My hair has started to fall out days ago. I'm covered with itchy, gross, wayward stray strands that won't stay where I want them anymore. I've begun to avoid running my hands through my hair at all...really don't want to pull out a clump.

He's quietly set up a chair and the razor in the bathroom. The second time he has shaved his wife's head. Not the maiden voyage. No uncertainty about how I will look. We have travelled this before.

Last time, two years prior, our little True about four years old at the time watched without blinking as the hair fell down, piles of long fair locks cascading down on the grey tile in ribbons. One minute a crowning glory and the next swept up and binned.

What a difference a day makes.

This time True and Brave begged for their heads to be 'made bald', and the night before they had followed through and the #1 all over had thrilled them to the core - running around the house in an excited frenzy-all baited breath over their new look. And the feel! I couldn't stop running my hands over those perfectly formed, sweet heads...eyes that looked ten times the size and sweet soft skin of cheeks softening the stark impression.

But me?

Freckled skin on cheeks, eyebrows threatening to abandon ship. Wrinkles around eyes deepening with lack of hair, and no protection for tired drawn expression thanks to chemotherapy and anaemia. 

And when I take my seat in the bathroom ready to just get it done, the last time floods back and it all tastes like deja vu and the tears I don't want to fall just come anyway, and it's pathetic, and Huz says he is so sorry to have to do this my love. And I know he is. Know he feels bad for me. But it doesn't feel like pity, just him being on my side. 

When he has cut off the longest locks his phone rings. A work emergency. He has to answer, but why now? Why when I look like a beast in this cropped hair? 

At least the boys have abandoned the jumping in the bath game they have played as they watched me and now they are watching 'Clifford the Big Red Dog'. I'm grateful they don't see the tears. But this time I don't cover my head as soon as I'm done. I don't bother. These boys of mine can't be protected from it all like I tried so hard to do last time. They must be made to see. Must be allowed to see the sickness in Mummy. 

And it breaks me.