I sit in front of a classroom of attentive sixth grade boys and girls, on a stool, with a cloth

 around my neck and a buzzing in my ears. I can feel the vibration and the cool metal of the clippers as they slide across my scalp. A strange feeling passes through my mind as a lump of dark orange fur, the size of a squirrel, falls past my eyes. It is a mixture of relief and loss.

What journey brought me to this point? It started in the late spring of 2004, when my mother

was diagnosed with breast cancer. There were naturally a lot of tears from everyone in my family but her. She said that she planned to do everything the doctors said and put the rest in God’s hands, except for her own attitude which was all she had in her control. She kept things light hearted around her, read humorous books and did a bit more praying, I should think. When she lost her hair, or really had it shaved off when it started to fall out, she made jokes about it and didn’t mind people seeing her in the funny hats, the wig or just as Kojak’s, Yul Brynner’s and Sinead O’Connor’s heads were seen, Au Naturale. Well, all of this helped her survive the cancer, I am positive.

We threw her a big party when she received her clean bill of health but wished I could do more to help others with cancer stay upbeat. I was certainly not the first son to honor his mother or father this way. I worked with a gentleman years before my own mother became sick who donated his hair. The first summer after I started to grow my hair out, there was a young man playing baseball for an Arizona team at JUCO with an abnormally large bush of blonde growth sprouting out from under his ball cap. My wife teased me about both our hair growth until we found out why this young man was letting his grow. This was one of the strange lessons I learned along this journey.

Some people still have very real ideas about what kind of person you are based on the length of your hair. Most people who knew me “pre-hair” thought I was going through some kind of mid-life crisis. Some who had just met me jumped to conclusions about my beliefs & opinions and the reasons for having long hair. As an example, when I recently walked into a grocery store, I was approached by some teenagers who asked me to buy them some smokes, something that had never happened to me before. In another instance, I was asked if I had a job since I volunteered so much at Caprock. Perhaps in both these instances, I may have been drawing conclusions myself. However, the real lesson for me was how outward appearance might influence others on how the perceive someone and how I reacted to the way I perceived they saw me. I told my wife at the onset that I was going to keep my project a secret, if I chickened out then no one would know. As people started looking at me differently however, I began to tell them what I was doing. I found out that my image in other’s eyes was more important to me than I realized.

I have a new found appreciation for what ladies go through with long hair and will not be harassing my wife any longer on how long it takes her to “get around”. I went through stages of hair gel, head bands, Dew Rag and ponytail, which was great except for the rubber bands pulling my hair out.

Finally, after 18 months and two fists full of my curly, red hair held above my now peach fuzz head, in front of a couple of dozen applauding sixth graders, my project has come to a close. My son’s class has helped me celebrate this last step of honoring my mother while reaching out to children who suffer from long-term medical hair loss through the “Locks of Love” program. I thank Mrs. Thompson for allowing me to share this journey with her class; it was full of special memories.

Daryn La Duke