musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Head Counsel


I have to confess that, since I live alone, I’ve occasionally surrendered; sometimes my needs get out of hand, and when I finally realize they are uncontrollable, I seek relief. In normal times, this was not difficult -there are places designed for this in most neighbourhoods, although admittedly you have to know where to look.

But the Covid-Time I remember was not a normal time; most establishments were closed, and their front line workers had to offer secretive in-home services -or even operate in secluded alleyways or behind drawn curtains and closed windows so any of their readily recognizable noises would not alert the authorities. Mind you, everybody would know who had transgressed -it’s so obvious when you know what sort of smile to look for… and most people, male or female, do; we’ve all been there.

Still, Covid or not, I was desperate, and one sunny morning in late spring, I decided I could not wait another day for relief. It was windy, I remember, and a garbage can had blown over and was rolling down the road, scattering its contents as it bounced into a ditch. I suddenly read my fate in that can as surely as in a dream. It was time. Covid was forcing my hand. There are some things you just can’t do properly on your own -not properly, at any rate…

In the midst of a pandemic, Coiffure, may not be the first necessity that springs to mind, but, as I said, I live alone, and despite my age, still relish my frequently misbehaving curly hair. So, during the early part of the pandemic, I took to wearing hats in a futile attempt to hide it, but it snuck out from under the brim in untidy waves that unravelled in the wind. And, much as moss on a sunny rock, it crept down the back of my neck like an unruly wrinkled cape.

Maybe if it had been grey, or a filmy white, it would have been less noticeable, but alas it was -and is- still the colour of hair. In a way, one might think that would make it easier to see in a mirror. Easier to decide where to cut, and yet it’s sort of like Leonardo Da Vinci’s mirror-writing: it’s all backwards. My hands only seem to work forwards; so does my brain, I think. At any rate, most of the fluffy, flyaway stuff was in the back, so good luck, eh?

And even if I had been able to identify an area of miscreance, it would have been difficult to position the scissors in the just-so position. Hair escaped from the blades; I have no idea how that happened, but there you have it.

Barbers have somehow learned to deal with escapes like that but it was new to me. My only recourse was to grasp the offending curl more firmly -which, in turn, destroyed its shape, tempting me to simply lop off whatever I captured before it escaped once again into the safety of the heavily treed slopes.

But, have you ever seen a freshly logged mountain a few weeks later? It no longer has the appeal of an expensive carpet -quite the opposite, actually; it looks diseased. Pocked. So I only attempted serious logging on the top, a fortunately hatable region, before I relented from my hitherto grab-and-go method and decide to let it reforest.

It was the curls hanging down my neck like blackberry vines that really needed attention though. Oh, and maybe those that suburbed along the sides of my head and coiled much as ivy might into my ears. I honestly don’t know how people with really long hair sleep at night. Mine scrunched on the pillow or tugged on each tragus in rotation as I turned and tossed the night away.

I mean, ideally, I would just use a large bowl from the kitchen, put it on my head, and cut everything that hung out of the bottom, I suppose; I’ve never been that desperate, though. In fact, I rather enjoy my curls vying for room up there, so I figured any cutting should be mindful of the ebb and flow of their waves.

Of course, with curly hair, a shower and a wash can hide a lot of damage -well, looking from the front in a mirror anyway. But who knew what people behind me in the line at the supermarket thought -even socially distanced? The idea that strangers might judge me by the back of my head gave me an idea, though: a ponytail; a man-pony, at any rate.

The idea was a simple one: gather up the back-hair into a bundle and slip an elastic band around it. Little girls learn to do it in Kindergarten, so by the time they are dating, it is second nature to them. They did not teach young boys that particular skill in Winnipeg, though -at least none were wearing their hair that way in the lower grades when my railway family were transferred there from the west coast. Still, even with increasingly arthritic fingers, how hard could it be to learn a new skill during Covid -albeit a hundred or so years later?

Pretty hard actually! Even the gathering process was tricky; hairs escaped all over the place, especially when the time came to entrap them with the elastic band. And those were only the ones I could see from the front. So, I practiced and practiced; I even bought a little hand-held mirror, so I could try to inspect the heart of darkness on the back of my head on the big bathroom mirror.

I’m not sure what I expected to see back there, but I’m glad I bought the mirror. Otherwise I would never have suspected the tail was hanging more on one side than the other. There’s more to it than just making sure there are no outliers; you have to centre these things. The thought occurred to me that perhaps with the previously injudicious thrusts of my scissors, I had misjudged the symmetry of my efforts; or maybe I really did have more hair on one side than the other.

But even when I was pretty sure I was better balanced as my fingers tapped over the unseen territory like white canes in a forest, it kept coming undone. As Yeats once lamented, Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold -and anyway, I suspected I was only ever entrapping a small fraction of the available hair. It seemed like a pointless exercise to have to refashion it several times a day. I don’t know how even the most dedicated ponytailers can stand the effort of the constant remodelling.

As Covid ground on, though, things changed; I decided I should avoid walking past the by-then-open barbershop near my home with my pitiful tail waggling behind me like Bo Peep’s sheep.

Okay, I was just too embarrassed to go in: customers would laugh; eyebrows would be raised; scorn might be meted. I decided to find a barber on the other side of town under a fake name -and a blissfully unravelled mop of hair.

Nobody escaped the continuing wrath of Covid in those troubled times…

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gozzter

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