Elevator Blues
Some of the worst moments of my cancer experience have taken place in the elevator at work. I've been employed by the same big company for 35 years, so when I got diagnosed five years ago, I knew a lot of people, at least by sight. But many of them suddenly stopped saying hello in the elevator. I felt shunned and humiliated. It was like a bad day in junior high school. And just as in junior high, my hair had a lot to do with the way I felt in the elevator.
Most of my life, I had more hair than I knew what to do with. It was thick and frizzy, and I wore it long so I could tie it up on damp days when it made me look like a dandelion. When I was a teenager my hair embarrassed me because I thought it looked like pubic hair. It wasn't until I was a young adult in the early 1970s that I stopped trying to straighten it (on the ironing board, or with orange-juice cans, or with home-permanent solution, or wrapped as it dried with a zillion little clippies placed side by side around my head). As a mature working woman, I tried to tame it with expensive haircuts, without much luck. In short, my hair has always defined -- and defied -- me.
When I lost my hair to chemo, I bought a wig that matched my hair color (or at least the color of the dye I had begun to use when it started to gray). The wig was a neat bob with bangs that actually hung straight. It was perfect. And therein lay the problem. In no way did it resemble the messy, massy hair I had lost. (And there was no wig on earth that could -- and no woman on earth who would buy one that did.) The wig was too beautiful. Every day, rain or shine, it looked great. And that's when people stopped saying hello in the elevator. Maybe they didn't know what to say to the woman with cancer. But maybe they simply didn't recognize me.
About eight months later, I finally had enough hair in my follicles to leave the wig in the drawer. My new, real hair was gray and had a weird rabbit-fur texture, but it didn't have the straps and rough webbing that made my wig a misery. I was shy about appearing in public with hair so short -- and so old-looking! -- but I couldn't wait to stop wearing my disguise.
When I dropped the disguise, however, the reaction to my authentic self was the opposite of what I expected. People who had finally started to return my greetings in the elevator … stopped. Who was this grinning, intrusive old woman, and why did she insist on saying hello? They had just gotten used to the woman with the wig. Now they had to get used to the gray-haired lady.
In the end, the elevator greetings would have stopped on their own. Just as I did five years ago, my company has recently undergone a pervasive shedding. It has hired new, younger people. Alas, these days it is I who don't recognize the people in the elevator.
Posted April 28, 2011.
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