I Feel Bad About My Neck is a collection of essays by Nora Ephron that I read or listen to every now and again. It’s a great title, extremely relatable for many women of a certain age when hairs start to sprout in unexpected places and brown spots appear on our hands. It’s all down to this phenomenon called ageing. A beautiful thing. But it’s also a transition and like any transition, it can take time to adjust.
I don’t feel bad about my neck. I’ve always had a couple of extra chins, more visible from certain angles than others. They would surprise me sometimes in the photos other people took of me - who is that person with generous neck undercarriage? I take a lot of selfies, because I know the angles that work best for my chin area.
I don’t feel bad about my neck (chintastic) or my belly (generous) or my hands (they look older than I feel) but lately I feel funny about my hair. It’s been on quite a trip. I was lucky enough to avail of life-saving chemotherapy treatment in the Mater hospital last year after I was diagnosed with cancer. Before starting the treatment, I knew my long, thick, highlighted hair, the kind of hair people rave about when you’ve had it professionally blow dried, was not long for this world.
In preparation, I got my enviable mane cut into a bob in a hairdressers in Terenure. I found the place after I went to a Maria Doyle Kennedy concert in my local Protestant church in North Strand. I was on crutches at the time, having broken my ankle in a fall because cancer wasn’t enough to be dealing with. From my pew, I spied a woman a few rows behind with such a beautiful short haircut that I made my soon to be husband, an introverted person who doesn’t routinely have the chats with strangers, get up and ask her where she’d got her hair done. She was delighted and told my soon to be husband about Jacqui in L’OmBré in Terenure. The short-haired woman told him Jacqui was so good that she followed her around from salon to salon for years. The next day I made an appointment.
My post-cancer treatment hair reminds me of boxing promoter Don King. It makes me laugh
Róisín Ingle: I did a good bit of ‘maevesdropping’ in the shop. It’s what Binchy would have wanted
I’m enjoying my new friendship. We’re at the stage when everything is fascinating
Róisín Ingle: I have a list in my head of unwritten letters. Now I will write them
I brought my mother along, for moral support. It was a strange, emotionally turbulent time now I look back. Anyway, Jacqui turned out to be the perfect person to give me a new “do”. She had helped a lot of women with pre- and post-cancer hair conundrums and had a close friend with a similar diagnosis to mine, breast cancer that had spread to the bones, who she told me was doing well years after she first got her own shocking news. My mother got her hair done too, promising our new friend a copy of her memoir (Openhearted, she’d obviously kill me if I didn’t plug it) and a jar of her homemade marmalade.
So, thanks to Jacqui I went into my chemotherapy adventure with a bob and then a few weeks later on Valentine’s Day, when my bob started to fall out from the expected side-effects, I got my brother-in-law Killian to come into hospital (I was in there again for an operation on my other leg, cancer still not being enough drama for me) and he shaved it all off with his clippers. I felt only relief.
Sometimes, I went around the place with my shaved head, even though it meant I’d get strange, sympathetic looks from people who took one look at me and thought: cancer. Sinéad O’Connor modelled this hairstyle so well, but all these years later people still don’t believe a woman would shave her hair off unless there’s a tragic reason - see Britney Spears. Sometimes, the sympathy was useful. One night, rushing for a train that was leaving the platform in Galway, I’m convinced the Irish Rail worker stopped the train and let me on because he felt sorry for the woman with the cancer head. Other times, I’d wear a wig. With the wig on I’d feel inconspicuous and normal and a bit like my old self even though my old self was dead.
I wore a wig when I got married last July. Stephanie came to my hotel room to style it. We both cried when she was finished. After the wedding, I hardly ever wore the wig again and when I got my byline photo done, to illustrate an article in which I came out about my cancer, I felt cool about my hair in an Olivia Colman or Judi Dench kind of way.
We transition. We adjust. And now I feel funny about my hair. It’s been growing. Vertically. It’s a grey skyscraper rising from my scalp, defying gravity. It had been bugging me, who my hair was reminding me of, and then the other day I put an image of boxing promoter Don King alongside a picture of me in the family WhatsApp with the caption “separated at birth”. My children could not get over the hair likeness.
I don’t feel bad about my neck, I feel funny about my hair, by which I mean that when I look in the mirror these days my hair makes me laugh. And, oh, it feels good.
