Mirror, Mirror on the wall.

When I told the kids that I didn't have any cancer in my body anymore, their responses were varied, and typical, for each of them

Ella of course has no clue what I'm talking about.

Max just said, "Oh," and then proceeded with, "Can I color?" Occasionally though, he will bring it up, completely out of the blue, that I don't have to go to the doctor's because the cancer is all gone. I think he got pretty tired of me leaving the house all the time for all my appointments, especially my daily radiation treatment.

Cameron on the other hand, had a lot to say. "Really? It's all gone? YEAH! Good job mom. But when are you going to get your girl hair back?" I asked him how long my hair had to be for him to consider it girl hair? "Oh, just about this long (as he motioned to about chin length). You know, when it hangs down and isn't stuck to your head anymore like boy hair."

How long will that be? A REALLY LONG TIME...was my response.

Actually, every Sunday I obsess about my hair length...in church. During the morning service my kids are in childcare and not distracting me. I sit toward the back and have a clear view of many different hair lengths. Even though we have an incredible pastor with very interesting and amazing sermons (I encourage you to listen to them for free here), I sometimes find myself looking at someone's hair, then calculating how long it will take for my hair to grow to that length, if the often-said formula of 1/2 inch per month were actually true. To get my hair back to my pre-chemo days, we're actually talking like TWO YEARS!

Last weekend, still at church, I was walking down the halls of the kids' area when one of my good friend's husband (who I see almost every weekend) walked right past me. "Oh, I didn't recognize you," he said kindly. And I thought to myself, yeah, I so get that. Honestly, (except when I'm in church), I don't really think too much about my hair anymore....until I walk by a mirror, or see a photo of me. I then get that strange feeling of not recognizing myself!

I'm actually not complaining. Losing my hair is a small price to pay for my life. Now when people comment on my hair, I just say, "Yeah, it'll do for now. At least it's better than being bald" because I certainly was NOT one of those cute little bald women you often see in cancer materials.

So it will be a while before this boyhair grows into girlhair. Until then, I'm just going to enjoy the low-maintenance of it all. And maybe add a few hair extensions.