The Transformative Beauty of Bald
By Timaree Marston
The one memory of my son Caemon that I can recall most easily is how his bald head felt beneath my lips when I kissed him. Eight years after losing my sweet 3-year-old to the beast that is juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML), this is one of the only tactile memories I am able to conjure in a flash: how that perfect head — the head everyone complimented when he was a mostly-bald baby — felt sticky and smooth and warm.
With a little more effort, I can feel that same baldness, the back of his head cupped in my hand as he rested on my chest, exhausted from a bath or dressing change — or even the slight fuzziness as his hair started to come in just a few weeks before he died. I remember the way in which his baldness transformed him from a toddler boy to someone more like those statues of the baby Buddha. My beautiful, wise, and oh-so-sick little boy.
Unlike some parents of kids with cancer, I never shaved my head while my son was in treatment. He needed his mommy to be his constant, and that included my hair. After he died, I honored his wishes for a few years, hosting St. Baldrick’s shaves, shaving the heads of his other mom, family members, even one of his oncologists. It was all very therapeutic to see visual reminders of good done in my son’s memory, but I started to want to do it myself.
Then, I found the 46 Mommas. These women, a huge tribe of mothers with children impacted by cancer, were not only shaving their heads, but they were also raising huge sums of money for St. Baldrick’s. Their energy was just what I needed. In 2016, I joined up with this band of ladies from all over the country in Las Vegas to attend my first big St. Baldrick’s shave. I was ready.
At 46 Mommas shaves, no one shaves alone. I was paired with another Momma who had recently lost her baby boy to cancer. I remember us both sitting in chairs on a stage, holding photos of our precious boys, tears in our eyes. It was surreal. Elvis was there. There were balloon animals and loud music and beers and all these women I didn’t know who were so loving and supportive. The event was hosted in McMullen’s, a huge Irish Pub, also owned by parents who had lost a child to cancer. I knew no one, but I felt so safe.
I held hands with the other Momma for a moment as the barbers took their first swipes at our heads. I thought of my boy and how scared he was to have his first “hospital haircut.” I thought of the few times I had shorn his head to help him cool off in summer, summers before cancer, how there had been tears then too, how I had kept locks of his white-blonde hair each time, how I would cuddle him and praise him and offer him treats after for being such a brave big boy, how I wished he was there to offer some of that same comfort to me.
I remember the moment when I could feel the air on my scalp, my whole scalp. My head felt cold, even in the torturous heat of Vegas, and it felt just a little sticky. The barber complimented the shape of my freshly-bald head, and when I showed her Caemon, with tears in her eyes, she said, “He had your same beautiful head.” I swelled with grief and tears and pride in that moment. This was another way I could carry my boy with me. And when I saw myself in the mirror for the first time, while shocked, I could see my grief and my love for my son laid bare. Here I was, Caemon’s mommy.
When I landed back in San Francisco just a couple of days later and felt the cold Bay air on my scalp, it really hit me that I was bald. I was bald and I was home — and people were looking.
People tend to watch a mom with a bald head. Even in the San Francisco Bay Area, it just isn’t something we see often, but there I was with my baby girl, shopping for groceries, going to the park, sitting at storytime bald as can be. As an introvert, I was never one to initiate a conversation about why I was bald, but sometimes someone would compliment me on my daring haircut, and I could say, “I did it for my little boy.” I would tell his story, and my heart would warm to feel his name fall from my lips, for someone else to know he lived.
In the past five years there were two other times I shaved my head with St. Baldricks and the 46 Mommas: once in Austin, Texas, and once in Washington, DC. Every shave is different. Sometimes it is exciting, and I am ready to be free of hair again (swimming with a bald head is divine!). Sometimes there are nerves because shaving my head means for me that there is no hiding behind hair, that my face is there to see, grief days and all. Often it feels like I have joined my tribe again, ready to fight for all our kids.
In every shave I have experienced and every shave I have watched, there is an unmistakable moment. It is that moment when I know there is no turning back, when I realize it is happening. I close my eyes while locks of hair fall down and tears fall down to meet them. In this moment, the world around me quiets. I am sitting with my son, my heart filled with all the love I have for him, and slowly, slowly, I come into myself, stronger, fiercer, full of so much determination.
I have watched dozens of mothers at our events experience the same, watched as their eyes closed, and tears and pride and grief and serenity and joy washed across their faces. Each one opens her eyes again looking like a mother warrior. It is by far one of the most powerful transformations I have seen women undergo.
For now, I am taking a break from shaving my head. I think three shaves for three of my son’s years of life may be enough, for much like I can close my eyes and instantly imagine his bald head, I can now close my eyes and go to that moment of fierce serenity that came with every shave — the one that propels me in all the work I do in his name. That warrior momma is not stopping. She is always there, ready to say his name, ready to lead with love in carrying out his legacies, ready to do everything she can to put an end to childhood cancer.
To learn how you can help fund life-saving childhood cancer research, visit StBaldricks.org.
