BALD IS BEAUTIFUL

So here we were, my husband and I coming out of Sunny's restaurant after a scrumptious Saturday morning breakfast when I spotted him --a man in a shaggy, dyed red (In what I imagine was supposed to be an auburn shade) ridiculously looking wig. I couldn't help but turn and look at the beautiful shiny dome of my mate and thought, men, men, men, do not try to cover your baldness with hairpieces, toupees, comb-overs, and the like. Stand proud, stand tall. You are not your bald head!

It's 2008 and I just don't get the mindset that won't allow a man to
embrace his baldness. After all, I have not talked to a single one of my many female friends and have a one of them tell me that they would prefer a hairpiece of any style or color on an otherwise nice looking bald man. Indeed, all of the females I know, of any age, would rather date, be seen with, and love, a bald man over a man who covers his head with these god-awful "rugs" and does not have to confidence to be who he is.

Let us remember the old saying, "God only created so many perfect heads --the rest he covered with hair" and let's say together one last time, loudly and clearly that "bald is beautiful."

DILLI

Her name is actually Kay but for years I’ve called my sister “Dilli”. That’s short for Dilettante, a word I came across in high school and it means a person who takes on an activity for fun, doesn’t do it seriously enough to become good at it. She’s always been that way but she hated me calling her “Dilli” until her mid-fifties. Then she suddenly agreed and now in her late sixties still says, “Call me Dilli, I love being a delettante!”

When we were growing up, she was always making something. One of the first projects I remember was a beaded pot mat. She’d gotten a bead kit with 8 design patterns and planned to make all 8. She spent hours on one, an octagon shaped piece with a flower design that almost got finished. Our mother was very encouraging and had that almost finished pot mat in her kitchen for 45 years. Next came the fabric loop potholders. Kay stretched loops on a metal frame and soon was weaving ten potholders a day. Everyone got potholders and then, happily, the frame and bag of loops disappeared under her bed. At one time she did Indian beading on a loom until one Sunday she ran out of a particular color. Our parents were always saying, can’t you ever finish anything? Why don’t you finish that---(whatever it was)? “I don’t want to,” she would say under her breath.

One summer she took up reading with a vengeance. For the next three or four years she came from the library with a minimum of 6 novels at a time. It was necessary to have that many because our mother, to get Kay to do chores or to go outside for some exercise, would take away and hide whatever book into which Kay had disappeared. At times our mother had 3 books in hiding and Kay also. My mother hid hers in her linen closet, Kay always had one in the clothes hamper in the bathroom, one under her mattress. What a crazy game! During high school Kay got heavily into copper enameling and every evening she disappeared into her workshop in the basement. At the culmination of the enameling phase she started a really ambitious project, a self-portrait in 25 individual pieces. Then she lost whatever motivation had driven her enameling for 3 years and she never finished it. Later she told me when she has learned what she wants to know, the excitement of discovery is gone and she has no interest in or need to continue .

A short marriage left Dilly, at 27, a property with two worn down houses in run-down Venice. You can imagine what kind of shape a place that cost $10,500 was in. She didn’t have money to pay for workmen but that hardly fazed her. She welcomed the new horizon of things to learn to do. At first she asked male friends for construction advice but soon discovered that most of them talked big but didn’t, just because they were men, know any more than she. She decided she better figure it out for herself.

One afternoon, having stared at the sagging ceiling for a while, she took a broomstick and rammed it straight up into the sheet rock. It made the expected hole that unexpectedly leaked termite droppings like sand from a child’s beach bucket. After she demolished the ceiling, she steam-rolled the wall between kitchen and living room. That’s how, over the next several years, she became a termite exterminator, sheet rock hanger, carpenter, tile setter, wallpaper hanger and painter. Now and then she had to hire a professional but she stayed in charge. In the summers she redesigned her outdoors. She created a small garden by reorienting the house entrance and she made a landscaped patio with pond. Surrounding the pond she poured concrete pavers, each decorated with a pebble designs. She did it all during the quiet hour or two of her baby’s naptime every afternoon.

Once the house was in acceptable shape she felt it needed furniture of fitting proportions and enrolled in Woodshop 101 at Venice Adult School. First she made a shelf, then a pot rack, then a dining room table with drop leaves and a chest with six mitred drawers . Her last project was a marquetry coffee table inlaid with 5 different colored woods sealed under 13 layers of finish. With that the house was furnished and she quit woodworking. Next she took up singing. Oh, yes. She joined a choir and sang (not very well) with enthusiasm. Maybe singing didn’t have enough action because now she decided it would be fun to tear down the leaning back house and replace it with a house built from scratch.

Kay found an architect with whom she had perfect rapport and they collaborated on a design based on a Frank Lloyd Wright technique she had seen on a KCET documentary. Her three story, asymmetrical tower kept her totally happy and occupied for the next three years. She jammed between architect, structural engineer and the city planning offices; learned to do spreadsheets to compare contractor bids; appealed for a variance at a special hearing and became buddies the contractor, the framing crew, and then the individual trade guys. That’s when she decided “Dilli” was a fitting name for herself. “Yes, it’s true, I am a dilettante and love it all!” she exulted. She learned tricks of the trade like how to get the walls straight, the floor horizontal and the windows sealed so that they don’t leak into the walls. She learned how to wire two-way switches and visited every tile store in the city looking for the perfect tile. The one project she executed personally was tiling the shower. It took her 2 years but it is spectacular: Circular in shape, it has mosaic lines swirling into the drain, abalone shells as soap holders, and tiny silver tiles in the walls that reflect light from the skylight in the ceiling. This is when I decided Kay is not a dilettante at all -- no professional could have executed it more masterfully.

This house also turned out really well with views, from two balconies, of mountains, palms and rooftops. Now Dilli is finishing work on the water feature of her garden that is in, what she terms, an “Italianate Zen” style. People ask her where she gets the energy and wonder how she can do so many different things. She says she is addicted to actualizing a vision. If she gets an idea for something, she thinks about how to make it, then executes it. If her calculations work out like she expected and her vision is actualized, she feels deeply satisfied and happy. What is important is not the table or the house but the creative process itself, she says. It must be an artist’s addiction.

Three summers ago, to everyone’s amazement, Dilli found yet another new interest. She walked that 600-mile pilgrimage from France over the Pyrenees to Santiago Campostela in Spain. The following summer she bicycled 1200-mile around the northern half of Germany to Amsterdam, the summer after that, the southern route via Prague, Salzburg and Basel. How do you do it, I ask. Kay says it’s just how she’s put together, that activity gives her energy rather than using it up. Recently she’s taken up writing, for goodness sake! I suppose she’ll never change because change is what Kay’s all about. Our father used to call her “Quicksilver” a name that might be more accurate for her than “Dilly” but I’m used to “Dilly” now and I delight in her each new incarnation.

Sylvester got the idea where he got most of his inspiration--while sitting on the toilet. A new literary form. A one word story. A drubble. Ideal for the busy reader. It would revive his literary career. Sylvester just had to find the right word. He drank endless cups of coffee, smoked thousands of cigarettes, and spent hundreds of nights pacing. Then early one morning the sun suddenly burned through the clouds and burnished in large orange letters on his wall a word that Sylvester immediately recognized as best capturing both the human condition and man’s inhumanity to man: OVERDRAWN.

Immediately after assuring ourselves that all was normal, that he had ten fingers and toes, we determined that this just born seven pound member of the human race whose head was covered with thick, long blue black hair would no doubt be a baseball player because his head was shaped like a diamond. Fortunately as he grew older his face rounded out, his cheeks that looked like apples were no longer pink as his skin took on an olive Mediterranean glow. Only his small black eyes remained black, small and intense.

As a baby he laughed a lot but as he grew he became a serious pensive child who loved to read and play his mandolin. He started running at ten months and finally learned to walk by the time he was three.

He was not very interested in sports and there were times that he would rather get into the bathtub with a book and stay there until he was finished so by the time he came out he looked like a prune with wrinkled fingers. He loved the water and his favorite sport was swimming. When he was just learning to balance himself on two legs he was knocked over by a wave on the beach in Rabat, Morocco. Damn, I thought, he’s going to be the first in my family to fear the ocean. Instead he came up coughing and between gulps of air said “more, more.” Next to Mama, Dada and NO these could have been his first words.

Our family of four arrived in Rome, Italy in the spring of nineteen sixty three. Randy was five and our daughter Terri was three and a half. There was no military housing in Rome, as most of the personnel were assigned to their countries embassies. Our children went to the Overseas School of Rome where their friends were children of embassy liaisons and employees of a variety of countries around the globe along and with CEO’s of many corporations that had branches in Italy.

When Randy was about six many American dads decided to start a little league baseball team. Before we knew it we had enough fathers enlisting their sons and daughters with or without their permission. Randy was less than enthusiastic but willing as his best buddy would be on the team. He ended up all the way out in left field a place where he could pick his nose, watch the planes and birds go by. He would check his glove every now and then as if to remind himself why he was there.

Finally we’re in the ninth inning. The score is tied, bases loaded. Poor Randy is up at bat and all I can think of is his being taunted and abused for the rest of his life. Maybe we can get reassigned to save him the humiliation of losing this game.

Randy walks up to the plate. He swings his bat like the pros do. The pitcher throws the first ball and Randy doesn’t move a muscle. “Ball one” the referee shouts. The pitcher throws another and again Randy seems paralyzed and again the referee shouts “Ball two” then “Ball three.” You could hear the silence in the bleachers after everyone took a deep breath without exhaling. All this time Randy hasn’t moved except to swing the bat now and then. The pitcher is rolling his arm. Randy poises himself on the plate. The pitcher throws the ball, Randy doesn’t move the referee shouts “Ball four” and the “man” on third walks home. The parents in the bleachers exhale creating a resounding cheer. “Randy, Randy, Randy.” They pick him up and carry him in to the center of the field

“How does it feel to win the game Randy?” And with his eyes blazing in glory, a voice almost trembling with joy he said “Gee, I never hit a home run before.”

In the months following my husband’s death, several people commented that it took courage for me to have him removed from the respirator. I didn’t understand. It seemed to me to be the only decision I could have made.

The massive stroke that sent Joel to intensive care just seven days earlier had caused brain damage. Then, three days later, he had heart and respiratory failure. He was resuscitated and placed on the respirator. He was in a coma.

I knew this was not the way Joel wanted to live. He would be first in line for the wheel chair races if it had been a physical disability, but he wouldn’t want to live without his cognitive abilities. And he would not want to spend his life tied to a machine. Joel had no legal papers, no living will, to guide me. But we had discussed it, and neither of us wanted to live totally disabled and dependent upon others.

Joel never came out of the coma and his vital signs deteriorated. The machine became the only thing keeping him alive. I asked it to be removed. It seemed to me to be a kindness to him to allow him to die.

I then became the object of hostility from Joel’s brother and several of his friends. One expressed the thought that I had killed Joel as I’d made his death final by removing the respirator. I will confess that a couple of times in my grief I wished he were on the machine in my living room where I could hug his comatose body. But those feelings were fleeting.
**********
A year and a half after Joel’s death, a plane flew into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A friend and her husband lived and worked in Los Angeles, but he frequently visited the Pentagon on business. I called. He was home and safe, but one of his Pentagon contacts was killed in the crash. A few weeks later she sent an email message saying her husband was in Washington, D.C. visiting the remaining people he worked with at the Pentagon. I emailed back that it took courage for her to allow him to fly there.

The next day, sitting at my desk, I viewed the list of new emails. One was from her. As I opened it, my back uncurled and I found myself sitting straight in my chair, feet on the floor, hands in my lap. Dark crept into my peripheral vision until all I could see was her message. I felt myself zooming away from the desk as though there were a large void between me and the computer screen.

Her message read: “No, it didn’t take courage, but it has preyed on my mind more than I had anticipated.”

Almost before I finished reading the sentence a voice came from behind me and through my chest and spoke to the message, as if it were me speaking. “Yes, it did take courage. It is the same courage it took me to remove Joel from the respirator. It is the courage of letting go.”

Immediately my world snapped back to normal. I spun around in my chair looking for that voice. What was it? Those weren’t my words. What did they mean? Shaken, I turned off the computer, picked up my purse and keys and left the house. I was uneasy being there.

As the day passed, those words rolled around in my thoughts. I hadn’t thought of “letting go” and “courage” as being related. I reflected on times in my past when I had held on and times when I had let go. There was the disastrous relationship that I stayed in many years too long, just holding on. Letting go of it required changes: new home, new job, etc. Yes, it had taken courage to let go. I like guns about as much as some people like snakes and spiders, so when Joel told me he wanted to be a reserve police officer I panicked. After much stewing, I realized that if I could let go of that fear, then there would be room in my life to let in his joy of being an officer. That too had taken courage.

And as the day passed, I relived that week in the hospital. I came to recognize that I did have another choice. I had just quickly made the decision and dismissed the one I didn’t choose. By the end of the day I understood the voice. It doesn’t take courage to hold on and control. It takes courage to let go. It takes courage to trust that what will be will be. It takes courage to have faith that when one lets go, a safety net will be there. I also understood that I had two choices. I had the choice of the known, of holding onto my comatose husband through the life support machine, or I had the choice of the unknown, of life without him.

Then I understood. It had taken courage for me to have my husband removed from the respirator. It was the courage of letting go.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Addendum
As I contemplate posting this on the blog fear begins to creep in, causing me to reflect on how far I have come. When I first wrote the above piece five years ago, it was two paragraphs in length. The fear of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), made writing difficult; not just stories, but also letters and emails. Once something is written, I’m exposed. I’m vulnerable. Someone might know me. And I open myself to criticism; criticism of the writing and criticism of me. Critiquing is different from criticism, and I welcome the suggestions for improvement. But the criticism of my youth made me clam up and withdraw. It has taken a lot of courage for me to let go of those fears and participate in writing classes. And I have gained tremendously.

I think it has taken courage for my classmates to post many of their writings as so many are of personal emotions. It is a compliment to our trust of each other.