My Leg Barber

Cancer is for the birds

Source: Karen Arnold, Public Domain Pictures

“Do you want me to shave your legs now?” asks Dr. Science.

I’m still lounging in my pajamas and socks on a cold, early spring morning. All my attention is focused on texting a friend about coffee next week, so it takes me an extra second to realize he’s posed a question. I look up at him before glancing out the window.

“We don’t have to go outside,” he says, registering my hesitation. “We can just put a newspaper down.”

He has his trusty electric razor in one hand, its trailing cord in the other, and a folded newspaper tucked under one arm.

Living with this man sometimes requires quick thinking.

“Uh. Okay,” I say, mid-text. Never mind that he’s about to leave for a neighborhood fire-prevention meeting (thus he was showered, shaved, and dressed). With five minutes to spare before departure, he’s reporting for duty. Ahh. I seem to remember that several days ago, anticipating warmer weather, I’d asked him to tell me the next time he trimmed his beard. I needed a favor.

I follow him. He sits down in his chair in the living room, spreads the paper across the carpet, and hands me the plug. It takes me a long split-second to realize that the outlet is the one hidden under his chair—the one for our living room lamp.

I unplug the lamp, plug in the razor, sit on the foot stool, pull off my socks, and roll up my flannel pajama bottoms. The winter crop of leg hair has grown long, dark, and feathery. He doesn’t see what I see, but he believes me.

He’s always believed in me and respected my grooming habits, but this leg-shaving routine is a recent development in our relationship. For fifty years I shaved my own legs (or didn’t) with a trusty refillable single-blade cartridge razor I’d owned since college when fake tortoise-shell brown plastic was cool. Years later, when I caught a glimpse of the future—fancy fashionista razors refillable only with expensive six-blade cartridges in small packages—I’d bought a cache of discontinued-item Revlon refills. And the older I got, the less I cared about shaving any part of my body.

Then came the shocking diagnosis of triple-negative breast cancer and inevitable chemotherapy treatment.

The hair on my head then was thick, mostly dark, and notorious for its natural curl. No one else had a mane quite like mine, I was often told. But knowing complete hair loss was likely during the course of twelve weekly chemo sessions, I asked Keith to shave my head. I didn’t want to find clumps and ringlets on the shower floor or on my pillowcase once the poison kicked in.

“And while you’re at it, could you shave my legs, too?” I had asked.

We sat outside in the sun on the upper deck. The breezy day was perfect for carrying stray puffs of thick hair into the Pinon and Juniper trees, something the birds might appreciate for nest-building.*

Keith draped a towel over my back, showed me where to sit to make it comfortable for both of us, and began with a gentle first pass starting at my forehead, gliding the blade from front to back in smooth, even strokes. I kept my eyes closed as I listened to the hum. By the time he finished, I was bald and we were both covered with my DNA. He told me I looked great as he handed me a mirror.

“Ready for part two?” he asked.

We re-positioned ourselves. I watched him as he maneuvered his ancient electric razor carefully on each leg across my ankle bone, shin, and kneecap. Then he took the towel from my shoulders and used it to wipe my legs clean. I sat in the sun while he whisked hair into a dust pan.

Since then, he’s been my trusted leg barber. It’s not as big a job anymore—chemotherapy and age have changed the way my body functions. But I’m still here, and that’s what matters. The hair on my head has grown back both grayer and curlier, and a new generation of Blue Jays and Curved-bill Thrashers feast on pinon nuts, acorns, and insects. Like them, I can plan for the future.

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*Over a decade ago, musing on a fallen nest in my front yard, I wrote “Sparrows,” a poem included in my first collection, When East Was North (2012).

Sparrows

I find their strong basket-home
under the Juniper tree,
broken shell
clinging to its nursery.

Cradling the nest
I see
           not God 
but Sparrows
count the hairs  
from my head--
           stray brown and gray curls  
woven with twigs and colored thread
into a fragile avian bed.