Is Your Hair Starting to Decorate the Shower Stall?

Hair to spare

That’s what my stylist likes to tell me when I visit her every six weeks. “Wendy, my arms get a workout every time I do your hair!”

She is, of course, complaining about the thick locks I was blessed with despite what we have put it through over the years. Being the product of two parents with great hair who came together to produce a brood of six hairy offspring, my siblings and I are eternally grateful. Okay, just five siblings — my oldest brother got short-changed.

Now a woman in my mid-60s, I started noticing something unexpected and a bit troubling. My bountiful mop appeared to be falling out. Seriously! I began noticing more and more hair clinging to my hairbrush’s bristles instead of remaining on my head where it should be. Mornings had me peering into the bathroom mirror, pulling my hair this way and that, checking to make sure no microscopic lumberjacks were at work clearing scalp.

I immediately fired up my laptop and rushed to the source of all true knowledge, Google, to find the answer as to why my luscious locks had taken to decorating the shower stall instead of my head. WebMD along with legions of unknown experts revealed that hair could fall out due to pregnancy, childbirth, hormonal changes such as menopause, thyroid, aging, or, in some cases, a terrible shock — such as your hair falling out!

The keeper of my hair is stylist Crystal, one of the original Vietnamese boat people who arrived in Canada as a little girl in the 1970s. This tiny, feisty, rags-to-riches hair stylist has been messing with my ‘do for over 20 years. I’ve gone from brown to blonde to red, streaked to solid, fluffy to flat-ironed, long to shoulder length — all at her artistic hands. Opening her own salon a couple of years ago, she is blessed with tenacity and brains, and when it comes to my hair, she is the Hair Goddess.

At my next appointment, I brought my dilemma to Crystal’s attention. Fix me! Tell me I’m imagining it! To my horror, instead of reassuring me it was a figment of my imagination, she rolled her eyes and declared it was bound to happen. My entire life, I have coped with ADHD, keeping me in a constant state of motion — attempting to do everything at once. This makes for a high-strung personality and a stressful life. And now, combined with my age, my hair is rebelling and begging me to slow down.

My husband has taken to wearing his golf hat when we go for walks to protect his little bald spot from the sun’s burning rays. Yikes! Is this to be my future? Was my extensive collection of baseball and golf hats, fedoras and sunhats to become a necessity rather than an accessory?

Perched on my chair at Crystal’s station, contemplating my bleak future of thinning hair, the Hair Goddess once again grumbled under her breath that she deserved to be paid extra for working on my hair. “Stop whining. You still have plenty of hair to spare!” upon which I closed my eyes and allowed her to perform her magic.

The Goddess did have some good news though. “At least you don’t have old lady hair — yet.” You may ask — what’s that? Apparently, as women age, the texture of our hair changes and starts to feel less like strands of silk and more like cotton batting. Are you kidding me? Isn’t menopause punishment enough? Now we have that to look forward to as well.

After a few months, in answer to my prayers, my hair did grow back, but not quite as thick as it used to be. As Angie Dickinson once said when asked why she didn’t do her nude scenes in Dressed to Kill, “The old bod ain’t what it used to be.” Guess that goes for hair too.

My son lost all his hair while receiving chemotherapy. If not for the circumstances, bald certainly suited him. And then there was the day my daughter shaved her head just because she could. I’ve seen some beautiful women who shave their heads. So I guess it’s all about perspective.

I need to stop fussing — I think I’ll be okay. My mother is 101 and has a full head of silver hair — a bit thin perhaps, but it’s still there. Besides, if the worst should happen, I hear spray-on hair is a real thing.