The Cabbage Patch Gurl

She cupped her hands together and looked down at her dark brown hair. Two elastic bands bound the smooth strands of each of the four pony tails, each one exactly eight inches long. She gently stroked it for a while and then tucked it all into a clear zip lock bag and snapped shut the seal. Tomorrow she would mail it to the non-profit organization that claimed to make wigs for women with cancer.

Moments later she dared to look up again into the bathroom mirror. Her second look at her new appearance. A face stared back at her. Just a face. A bare face with not a single lock of hair to frame it, nor the shades of expression or emotion to color it. She leaned forward to peer at the top of her head. A brown fuzz with jagged ends, interrupted by silvery white patches where she had held the scissors too close to her scalp. She tried to run her hands through it but realized that there was nothing left to run them through – it was a soft rounded surface now without any depth or volume to it.

Her face remained as expressionless as it had been for the past week. Or perhaps, it was the expression her face had plateaued to when she had reached some midpoint between her depression and her newfound sense of tranquility. It had been two weeks now since she had heard that her friend’s wife had terminal cancer, and finally after two weeks of calling exprets around the country and researching possible clinical trials, she had hesitantly waded toward an acceptance. Acceptance that at the mere age of twenty-six, his wife would die within months or weeks or days; acceptance that there was nothing that she, or anyone else, could do to change this reality.

She had changed a lot in the past two weeks – a change that she had felt only internally so far, but now she could see it and touch it as well. What now, she wondered as she continued to look into the reflection of her eyes. Was this moment of transformation to be filled with tears or with laughter?

How does a tree feel when it loses its leaves at the end of autumn? Or the sun, when it sets at the end of a day? What emotions does a caterpillar experience when it becomes a butterfly? With each moment and each day nature continues to renew itself – the end of one stage bringing forth the beginning of the next. This moment was no exception to the rule, as yet another being passed from another end to another beginning.

She dusted off the top of her head and walked over to the balcony of her apartment. A tremendous feeling of lightness took over as the wind tickled the top of her head as it rushed on its course. The word liberation came to her mind. Yes, it was real. Yes, she had truly done it. She had found the courage within her to do something that she had never thought she would have dared to do. It was crazy and selfless and empowering and rash – all at the same time, and much more. But what about regret – any of that? Of what necessity was an action that would never benefit the person that it was done for?

But this was not a moment to regret or have second thoughts, she decided. She could have passed through this moment again and she would not have chosen any differently. Every action has its own special moment and place in the sequence of events in this universe, and out of the many actions that she could have chosen upon reaching the acceptance of her utter helplessness in this tragic situation, this was the action that was the most fitting for this moment. It was as simple as that. There was nothing more to it.

* * *

Three weeks went by. Slowly nature took its course. Slowly her dark hair started to cover her scalp again. Slowly, in another part of the world, her friend’s wife withered away till she balanced very precariously at the brink of life and death. Then there came the day when his wife lay still and not a breath came from her lips, not an expression on her face, nor any warmth left in her skin. The day when her friend was suddenly all alone – more alone than ever before, more alone than anyone could ever have imagined someone could be just a year after getting married. The short-lived bliss of married life was now followed by a very bitter cold loneliness that nothing could ever change.

She peeled off the scarf that she had tightly tied around her head each morning ever sine that day weeks ago when she had cut her hair. She didn’t want to hide it anymore. It didn’t matter what anyone thought or said now. Her action had not only been done in honor of someone beautiful – it was more than just that. Her action had helped keep the spirit of a young woman alive. Her action had proven, once again in the sequence of events in this universe, that even once nature takes its course and people end their material existence in this world, their essence can continue to live on through the actions of those left behind. It was as simple as that and there was nothing more to it.

* * *

Another five weeks went by and finally her thoughts and her emotions found their way to an empty white piece of paper, transforming its whiteness within moments into several lines of dark cursive script. Her hair had grown to be more than an inch long now, yet through her written words she had immortalized that transforming moment when her head had been covered by only a brown fuzz and silvery white patches. That moment weeks ago when she had found a way to hold on to the essence of an ephemeral being. A simple moment somewhere amongst the many others in the ongoing sequence of events in this universe.