Deciduous me

As an East Coast transplant, I miss autumn.

One year, Mark and I went to Montreal and Quebec in October and feasted our eyes on the glorious symphonies of fiery reds, deeper russets, golds, persimmons, bronzes - it was like the Berkeley Bowl fruit aisle writ large across the sky.

This year, I'm celebrating in a simpler way: I have become deciduous.

What I'm shedding is just basic brown but there is plenty of it showering down like crisp fall leaves.

For the past four days, whenever I touch my head, my hand comes away with dozens of hairs adhered to it through static electricity. If I rake my fingers over my head, I end up with fistfuls of hair. My clothes look as if I've been romping with a very friendly cocker spaniel. Don't get me started on the couch, the tub and my pillow.

It didn't take long to figure out how messy this was gonna be.

Just like that, I gained the will to chop it off, although not a full Monty buzz cut.

My regular lady at the cut-rate salon did a nice job with a sort of Joan Baez in her mature days look and assured me that it would grow back curly.

Ben, my son, chauffeured me.

"Hmm, now we have the same haircut," he said when he picked me up.


And it's true! I like looking like a twin to my boy.

Now the sprinkling has slowed down, but if -- or rather when -- it picks up again, eventually I'll look like a twin to Mark, who already has expressed his pre-solidarity with my condition by sporting the chrome-dome look for some years now.


+++

Also did some pre-emptive wig shopping at a hospital-sponsored free place - one wig per cancer patient.




Here are the array of choices. Wanna guess which one I picked?








I decided to be a redhead, in keeping with my autumnal theme. (Second row)