I wasn't going to post this because it is just me getting my thoughts down to help me make sense of it all, and really, there can't be anything new to it in this group. But now that it is all typed, I find I want to let it out. It is just my personal story, not meant to instruct, inspire, or shatter the earth.

Confused.

How was it that I found myself walking around the children's museum, uncomfortably hot in a knit cap? 

It probably started this morning when my husband was going with me and the kids to apply for their passports. I had planned to wear my new wig, but he added weight to the sense of what is expected when he asked if I was going to wear nice hair for my photo. Well, no, I wasn't getting a photo. My passport is still valid and still shows me with hair, if that rim that is the front end of a ponytail calls any attention to itself. Then the wait at the county clerk's office, with three kids, took almost three hours. When we escaped and I loaded three tired, restless and hungry kids (somehow a whole box of mini-peanut butter crackers--the whole box!-- hadn't fully distended each stomach) into the hot minivan, I, the tired, hot and hungry mother, took off my wig. When we made our way through downtown and parked for the children's museum, I thought, I don't want to be uncomfortable in a wig. I don't need a wig to play with kids. I don't want to put unnecessary wear on this wig. I will tuck my cap into my bag in case I want it, but here, let me put on this sun hat for the walk over.

Once inside, I did a borderline sleight of hand switch, whisking the sunhat off and putting the cap on, and there it sat, to eventually make me hot and, no doubt, more tired, and more grumpy. I could see the solution right in front of me. Pull off the hat, be as comfortable as at home. Be nicer to my kids. I just didn't feel comfortable doing it, and that made me feel inherently unpresentable. I didn't want to be a freak. Why hadn't I just worn the wig so that I could at least look normal, good even, rather than just being uncomfortable. I mean, the cap covered my nakedness, but not my hair loss. Why couldn't I have been better at this alopecian stuff and at least worn a cooler scarf? Would going around with a bald head really be any different than shedding my shirt because it was uncomfortably warm? Is a naked head on a woman obscene? Or, if not obscene, at least taboo in the way that a man can take off his shirt to kick a soccer ball around but a woman can't? And if I don't take off my shirt in public, doesn't that mean I am at heart one who conforms and therefore believe my aberration of a head should be covered?

When we got back to the car I looked at myself in the vanity mirror. No, the bald head wasn't hideous. It even looked normal to me, but I found myself wondering if it would leave people wondering if I was male or female. With the hot pink hat on, I never gave a second thought to whether others would see me as feminine, but did I look the way I felt if it was just an unadorned bald head? I have had passing thoughts about taking up makeup and maybe even trying earrings again. I got my ears pierced when I was twelve only to wonder over the years at the oddity of putting holes in one's body and dangling ornaments from them. It seems kind of abnormally conservative now to think that I could feel angst over simple single ear piercings, never mind a tattoo or other adornment. Anyway, my ambivalence made it easy to forego wearing earrings once I started having babies, and now I think the holes may have closed. Why can't I just wear a little makeup and some earrings that pop to make my bald head into a fashion statement? Do I resent feeling that I have to and therefore not give enhancing my appearance a chance? It is all well and good to say that I am so much more than my hair, that I want me and all women to be valued for who they are and not how they can project a vision of smooth, sparkly youth. It is not good if it leads to me sweating under a hat and feeling bad about myself. It is not good if it leads me, on some level, to pull away from my husband because why, after all, should I be called upon to remake myself as something more attractive? Do I delude myself that I never put an extra polish on my appearance when we were dating? Perhaps that is a whole other crevasse to fall into. My body 10 years ago hadn't had babies. I knew how to sleep then. I woke up happy to face the day more often than not. I decided how to spend big chunks of my time. I was me.

I rub the stubble on my head, feel the coin of smoothness in the midst of it, and then feel the sparse but definitely present hairs that now grow from the sides of my head. I don't think they were there before. Surely they weren't there before. I want to be excited. Regrowth! Instead, it is almost frustrating. Sparse white hair doesn't feel like an improvement over bald. Maybe it is the first step to a head full of hair again, or maybe it is the first step toward, well, toward not being able to do bald as well. And if I am really so into "this is me" and just being my natural self, does it follow that I will sport a confused, tufted, weirdness of white hair instead of shaving it off? What is the metric to decide when the hair wins another chance? And what does it mean if I balk at saying, "this is me," when the hair is back?

I am in over my head.