sigh...

I've noticed the pangs of my daughter's baldness creeping into my heart again lately.

Sigh.

I see the long, flowing hair of her peers, glistening in the sunlight.  I see the bows.  The braids.  The styles.   I see thick, full eyebrows and eyelashes adorning their faces, completely symmetrical and untouched by the Fall.

And I find myself wanting that for my daughter again, too.

Their hair grows and thickens.  Her head remains slick and bare.

She loves to brush my hair when it's wet.  She puts clips and bows in it.  Occasionally she'll tell me she wishes she had hair.

But it's more of a passing thought for her.  Right now, at least.

I suppose that's how it will be for me as well.


Just as a boisterous pregnancy announcement can spring forth the past pain of my infertility, there will be other triggers that cause me to grieve my daughter's alopecia.  I know it will only be for a time, until my heart is able to find rest again in His purposes.

But there will always be those times, won't there?

Sigh.

It's a rather strange thing to watch my son's hair thinning out in the places where he naps.  A patch in the back, a stripe along both sides from all the positions in which he likes to lay.  But what is a completely normal milestone for a baby holds sadness for me.  It reminds me of a time when her head was slowly being stripped bare.

And it never came back.

Don't get me wrong- I don't fear alopecia for Jameson.  (boy, wouldn't that be a crazy providence...)  But as I'm learning and reading up on how to care for his hair type, it reminds me that I don't get to do that for hers.  And today, at least, that makes me sad.

I wish I could take my daughter to her first swim lesson and not be pulled aside to be asked if she has any medical concerns or if they should give her resting breaks.

I wish I could have gone to that nice restaurant without having the entire staff sign their names across a box with a rather nice present inside just for her.  Deep down, I wonder when she'll catch on they're doing that because they think she's sick and dying.

I wish I could think about schools for kindergarten without fear of how the kids (or teachers) will react to alopecia.

But it is what it is, I suppose.

It's what I've been hand-chosen to confront for the rest of my daughter's life.

Tomorrow I'll get back into the Mama Bear mode.  And I'll embrace the fight on her behalf once again. I'll remind myself of all the truths I have been privileged to see and learn through alopecia.

It'll be okay.

But today?

Sigh.