My final thoughts as a fully-folicled chic: Musings on God, eyebrows, and other important things.

                                       (Me with an attached hair scarf the day before...)

On Friday, I was driving up Highway 18; the sun was setting and I was overwhelmed by a memory of the time I asked my mom “Who is God?” I was a tiny blonde 5 year old, sitting in the backseat of Tom York’s beautiful, white Cadillac—back when they still had real chrome detailing. The scent of the new wine-colored leather interior filled the air around me, and the seat was simultaneously engulfing me with its relative enormity and sticking to the back of my legs.

My mom turned around fully to face me, but all I could see was her head and neck above the massive leather bench seat that separated us. She struggled to explain God for a few minutes and would later present her black leather-bound King James with red-edged pages, when we got home to our Tualatin apartment. For the record, she really was doing her LDS duty to give me a KJ biblical explanation.

Still, not what I was looking for…

I remember being frustrated that my until-then-omniscient-mommie didn't know the answer to something. At 5, I didn't have the words to clarify that I really wanted to know: “Who is God to you? Where did she come from? What do you think she’s like?” Which I would ask my very religious grandmother Beverly a few years later and quickly be corrected that:

god is definitely a “He” who just is, and always has been, and don’t ask that again because there are just somethings we can’t explain but believe in anyways and your mother should have already told you this.

I bet LittleMom caught all heck for that.

That stretch of HWY 18 (the VanDuzer Corridor) I called “God’s Hallway” for most of my youth. A vivid child’s imagination of enormous bare feet attached to legs, which disappeared into the horizon of the tree line and sky above me.

So, I’m driving down God’s Hallway at 37 years old—which, like most things, seems smaller in the constriction of 32 years later—a magnificent changing sky of clouds and light ahead of me, obscured by the intermittent lenses of tears that had plagued my eyes for most of the drive. My best friend from high school Amanda Ryan Fear and I planned to escape to the coast for the weekend, so she could finish her dissertation and I could resume studying for the licensing exam. I brought Dexter and would arrive a day before her.

                                                          (Dexter at a viewpoint on Hwy 101 later this weekend.)

Having borrowed Wes Mackewich’s Wahl hair clippers, I had plans of my own for Friday. EPPP study avoidance? Possibly. But I was also aware I needed to get this project started.

Thee knot of my stomach and intestines cinched unbearably for probably the 20th time, this time as I swallowed whole the awareness that my tears were my ego’s vanity, being assaulted by the prospect of self-inflicted baldness. And I had a sobering thought:

“People fighting cancer probably cry for vain reasons too, but more intensely they cry about not being able to survive to see a sunset like the one spread before me, that, with the sunroof open, is a feast for the all my human senses. They cry for their mortality.”

I stopped crying once I realized tonight was the night. I think I teared up a bit when talking to the camera and brushing my hair for the last time and haven’t cried since. Let’s see how long that lasts…

                                                                         (The first cut...horribly blurry, sorry.)
I’ll try to post the videos of my shearing on Friday night…but until then, check out my growing list of things I have learned/relearned since shaving of the locks:

What I've learned so far:

• People stare at bald ladies and not bald gentlemen.
• Even bald men stare at bald ladies.
• My eyebrows are very important. 
• Stubble makes hats incredibly uncomfortable (save for Iana Amauba’s gift…satin inside. Genius!)

What I've relearned:

• Anxiety is relieved once we do what scares us…but the GI problems may stick around until the neurotransmitter soup of the tummy re-calibrates.
• My friends, family, and therapist colleagues are awesome supporters of me (and my guano crazy           ideas).
• At minimum: God is in the deeply aware gratitude we have for life, beauty, and the sanctuary of each        moment we fully inhabit. 

(Please email your hours/donation amounts to: DrBevyn (at) Gmail (dot) com