My Dad's Story

by Cathy Weeks

Shaving Daddy

Most of the time I call my father "Dad." When I entered my teens, and started caring what other people thought, I quit calling him "Daddy," even though I knew he liked it. I did however reserve the use of "Daddy" for when I wanted something, or for times of great emotion. "Daddy, can I get my ears double pierced?" and "Daddy, Bob broke up with me," are two examples. (I did get permission to get my ears pierced again, but not because I called him Daddy. It seems he just liked the look of double-pierced ears. And Dad gave me the needed comfort when Bob and I parted ways all those years ago.)

I started calling him Daddy more often when he got Esophageal Cancer.

He entered the hospital for treatment the Monday after Thanksgiving, 1995. I had spent the bittersweet holidays with my family, and on his last day at home before treatment began, Dad realized that he didn't want to see his hair fall out, so he decided to shave his head. It was a beautiful late afternoon, unseasonably warm, in the mid-60s. We took a stool outside for Dad to sit on, and my little brothers and I, and even my mom took turns cutting Dad's hair.

We started with scissors, and it wasn't long before Dad's hair, which was thin to begin with, began to look moth-eaten, and tufts of light dishwater-brown hair littered Dad's shoulders and the patio around his stool. The breeze blew some of it onto the lawn.

After we abandoned the scissors and switched to electric clippers, my brothers and I briefly gave him a mohawk, much to my parents amusement. But due to Dad's male-pattern baldness, it was a rather pathetic mohawk, thick only on the back of his head.

I watched the looks that passed between my parents when they thought no one was looking. They had grown apart in recent years, and suddenly they were staying up late, just talking, chatting about hopes and dreams, doing all the things best friends and life-partners were supposed to do.

I didn't know what to make of my parents' new-found closeness. I had gotten so used to them occasionally fighting, occasionally loving but mostly just sharing a roof, that I found myself wondering if their secret glances when no one was looking meant there were things that I didn't know about, or if they were really just trying to tie up loose ends.

My mom took her turn with the clippers, beginning to erase the thin mohawk my brothers and I had created. "You look funny, John," she told him. Dad only grinned in response.

As I kicked a tuft of Dad's hair into the grass, I wondered why my parents had a need to tie up loose ends, if Dad was as certain he was going to live as he told us he was.

My brothers, who were nine and twelve at the time, joined me in sweeping the remnants of our father's hair into the yard. They kicked it with the sides of their feet, rather like they would an imaginary hackysack that had hit the ground. Like my parents and I, they were in high spirits, but their happiness was born of innocence. They knew Dad had cancer, and that we were all in for difficult times, but my parents and I protected them from the seriousness of the situation, and our grown-up fears.

I took over with the clippers, listening to Dad tell a joke he had heard a few days before, and I laughed at the punch line, though the joke itself is long forgotten. As I worked, I ignored my fears, and concentrated on the lightness of the moment.

His head was now covered with a short stubble that he and Mom would remove with a razor after he had entered the hospital. I ran my hand over Dad's nearly-bald head, feeling the velvet of his shorn hair. His ears stuck out as they had when he'd entered the army, and his apparent good health made the disease seem very far away. Mom, too ran her hand over his head, and was quickly displaced by the boys who raced over to follow suit. He stood up and brushed off his shoulders, and then his own hands reached up and felt the loss of his hair. Daddy had shed his protective covering, such as it was, and we were now ready to confront his disease.

--by Catherine Weeks, July 1997.

--Cathy's update: January 12, 2001 came and went with no evidence of disease for my Dad. He is now considered cured!

Copyright © August 1997 by
Catherine E. Weeks