Hair Issues

Ever since I was a young kid, I know that mum is very vain over her hair and she would spend hours in front of the mirror priming. And mummy dearest, have the bad habit of plucking her white hair. At times, I even help her to pluck the white hairs from the area she could not quite reach with her tweezers. Being the most unfilial daughter, I would laugh at her pointing that she is going to go bald soon at the rate her white hair is growing and her determination to exterminate every strand of white hair she could lay her hands on. And I would always rub her by saying that I am really glad that I have my hair genes from my father’s side. My father did not have any white hair for a very long time and even going through the entire cancer treatment including chemotherapy, he only had very few strands of white hair and his hair only thinned slightly although the nurses kept predicting that all his hair would drop eventually. My late grandmother, did not even have a single strand of white hair until she was in her sixties and when she passed away in her seventies, she only had a very few strands of white hair. My impression of my late grandmother’s hair is that they were really black and shiny, even at the end stage of her life. And ah-hem, yours truly here, seemed to inherit this good gene. I have one white hair once a year (which I blamed my mum for passing her hair gene to me). Even at the most trying stage of my life when mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, I only had 3 strands to date for this year. Okay….back to mum and hair issues. She is really old fashion – she did not want to dye her hair to hide the white hair because she is scared that the ‘chemical’ would be bad for health.

With ovarian cancer, the white hair issue disappeared entirely because mommy has no hair!!!!!  And throughout the chemotherapy treatment, my mum was really afraid that her hair would not grow back because of her bad habit of plucking her white hair. The good news is that once the chemotherapy stopped, her hair started to grow back rapidly. It has now been 2 months since the last chemotherapy treatment and some of her hair is now 1 inch long. And mommy dearest finally has something to wash on the top of her head. She is really pampering her new hair with baby shampoo. I caught her staring at the mirror looking at her hair several times. The following conversation took place a few days ago –

Mum: ‘Girl, I think my hair is growing back’
Me: ‘Hmmmm…..’
Mum: ‘But there seemed to be more white hair than black hair. What do you think?’
Me: ‘Er…..maybe 50% white’
Mum: ‘!!!!!!!!’
Looking at my mum’s horrified face, I revised my figure upwards quickly.
Me: ‘Maybe 60% black’
Mum screeched: ‘What!!!!!’
Sorry, mum. I don’t think I can revised the figure any higher…..65% black is too optimistic. For one moment, I could sympathize with the men being asked by their wives whether they were fat or not.

I think mum is kind of resigned to the white hair. I asked her whether she could resume her plucking white hair routine but she retorted that she would have not much hair left if she plucks all her white hair. She is now contemplating dying her hair once they grow to a reasonable length. She figured that since she survived through chemotherapy, the ‘dye chemical’ could hardly do any more harm to her. Way to go, mum!  

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