My mother's beauty

We walked into the wig shop. It was in a rundown little plaza next to the Ben Franklin 5 and Dime in town. A shop we’d driven by our entire lives and not once noticed. Now here we were, trying to find the little drive into the shop, the entry too steep, bouncing one tire over the curb. I was 31. It was her second diagnosis.

My mother had a small, cotton wrap on her head. Her sister, my Aunt Barb, had made it, had driven up three hours from Flint to try it on my mother’s bald head on a Friday evening. Then driven home that Sunday to make a dozen more. She mailed them seemingly overnight. They were all different fabrics. Paisleys, solids, hearts.

Years before that, my Aunt Barb had sewn my mother a set of curtains for our living room. The two sisters had spent an entire unclocked week together picking out material, measuring, cutting, sewing, knocking down a lamp and giggling, giggling until they cried, and then after lunch, getting back to work.

I remember that week, or maybe it was an entire summer. Aunt Barb coming all the time, curtains for every room. A new hobby, a kick. Aunt Barb so talented and my mom so happy to have her there. Their laughter was contagious to everyone in the house, sometimes even my father.

My mother’s headwrap that day in the wig shop was a blue and cream paisley. She hated those wraps, the ones made with love, but they offered her a way to go out in public. She never let anyone see her bald head, not even her family, if she could help it.

The wig idea came as Christmas approached. She had to go to my father’s office party. She really didn’t want to go, but she really didn’t want to go without hair.

We looked at wigs in the tiny little shop, rows and rows of them. One after another. Every one, every single one in the shop a theater prop. Should my mom go with blond? Long tresses? Or red, fire red? I carried on making jokes in the quiet, narrow, long shop. The woman behind the counter gave me no encouragement. I was acting like a child, but I couldn’t stop. If I took this seriously, things would be very, very serious indeed.

My mother ignored me for the most part. She reached out and pulled curls here or fluffed bangs there, but she didn’t take any off the white Styrofoam heads lining the wall, one heartbreaking reminder after another.

Finally, I braved it.

I picked out a jet black short, cropped one. I slipped the wig on over my own short, brown cropped hair. I tapped her on the shoulder.

“You could go with Aunt Barb’s look,” I said.

She turned to see her daughter wearing her sister’s hair.

“Putz, what have you got?” she laughed and - finally - we were laughing together. But the moment was small and cropped too.

Here, let me help. The woman behind the counter finally spoke. She took my mother aside and away from her ridiculous, laughing daughter. She asked my mother for a picture of what she used to look like. Mom produced a photo from just a year ago. She had my tiny son in her lap, and she was kissing him as he dodged it with laughter.

The woman studied it, then found a pale wig, one streaked with gray and blond highlights, short but not too short, close to the picture, but nowhere near.

My mother revealed her bald head to the woman. The woman did not flinch. My mother smoothed down the few wily hairs that sprung out above her ears and laughed at them, smoothing, laughing, smoothing, looking down. The woman, with a small laugh in return, fit the wig on my mother’s head and primped it.

Here, look in the mirror, she said to my mother, you look beautiful.

In that moment, my heart imploded to look at my mother and see a woman I didn’t recognize from behind. I held still and watched, my heart pounding, drowning out everything else the woman said.

My mother tucked the back up a smidge, then, looking over her shoulder, asked me, What do you think?

I was shocked again. The wig was like the set of curtains that Aunt Barb had made so long ago. It didn’t change the view. Everything fell away when I looked at my mother. I didn’t see her bald head or the wig or an illness. Instead, my mother was my mother, her pale blue eyes and soft, round face looking back at me - still there, still her, despite everything.

I nodded. Yes, Mom, it’s you.

She turned back to the woman.

“I’ll take it,” she said, yanking the wig off with one pull.

---

Later, after the Christmas party, after she told me it made her head itch all night, she told me the truth:

“That damn thing,” she said, “I hate it.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked. I poked at it perched its Styrofoam head, an animal huddled on her dresser.

“It’s hot and it’s ugly,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror, “and that wig is not me.”

Looking at her face next to mine in the mirror, this time under one of those wraps made with love, I told her the truth, too: You’re right - it’s not.

💙