The wall that separates healthy Michele from sick Michele must certainly be infinitesimal. It seems like only seconds ago, my wife and I were driving to the store complaining about our 1999 VW Jetta and lamenting about our financial woes.

She wore a chestnut colored stitched wool blazer and her hair spilled down the front of it like a frozen amber waterfall. There she was, squinting her eyes from the sun, determined to make a point while the day illuminated her porcelain finish seemingly from the inside out. All was fine that day, coffee was shared, laughter was had and feelings were hurt. She was healthy and by all the standards of marriage we were happy.

Today we find ourselves in an earnest struggle but not against cancer, not AGAINST anything really. We try not to waste our energy on such things. The struggle is for normalcy. It’s for Michele’s appetite and strength to return, for her body to heal and for her mind to relax. We can pray for those things and we do. We can think good thoughts and we do that too.

Cancer didn’t come here to take my wife away or to frighten my family. Cancer doesn’t care how Michele and I feel, it just IS. It’s a weight on the family that is only made lighter when all of us lift together in unison. When one of us gets tired, the other one holds it up until we can resume again.  It’s really a thing of beauty to behold. As it turns out, we are almost exactly the same family we’ve always been with the only difference being that all that lifting seems to have made us stronger.

We have seen the challenge and begrudgingly accepted it because the only moment we have, is the one sitting right here in front of us. The line between today and yesterday, tomorrow and a hundred years from now is imperceptible. It’s the blink of an eye, a dazzling streak of lightning against a cobalt sky and then smoke. We are and always will be our moments, the good ones, the bad ones and everything in between, stitched together like Michele’s brown blazer.

I don’t want our stitches to be made of fear anger or regret, I don’t want to waste my time forecasting all the things that could happen or have happened all the while missing out on what IS happening. I am this moment now, scary and unpredictable but I don’t think it should change who I am or who my family and friends are. Michele could spend all of her days asking why she had to get cancer. She occasionally does ask the mirror or the television or her glass of ginger ale but when nobody answers back, she moves on, stitching her moments together because what else is there.

She is a superhero, more courageous than Christopher Columbus more dauntless than Evil Knievel. I have personally watched her brazenly go through procedures that would have made the Rock tap out. There have been tears too, plenty of them, there is uncertainty and endless questions that pile up like too many dirty dishes, but through it all we have each other, we always have.

We also have all of our amazing friends and extended family and their friends and even their families. We have generosity that flows to us from the mouths and hearts of  strangers in the form of comforting words, food, and insight. It’s amazing.

Before long, we will once again cross the threshold of this thin wall that separates us from our many yesterdays and life will return to normal. We will complain about our crappy Jetta, be aggravated over the price of gasoline, and Michele will be perfectly healthy.

Still we will have gained something, something precious, the ability to contrast the everyday inconveniences and aggravations against what this moment has shown us, a gift that is far greater than gold and a lesson so profound that it fills my heart with love as I write this.

There are terrible, scary things out there in the world, things that would make even the great and powerful Chuck Norris want to run and hide. Should this keep us from stealing a kiss from our beautiful wives or husbands? Should we not go to our kid’s graduation because there are questions that we can’t answer? Who knows how big our life’s blanket or blazer will be or how long we will be able to keep on stitching. I certainly don’t, but I intend to keep good company and enjoy it so long as I’m still holding crochet needles.

All the same, I tried to emotionally prepare myself to lose my hair. I also figured by doing that. It wouldn’t hit me so hard. After all, I’ve never been all that preoccupied with how I look. Sure, I’m like any Cuban-Brasilian, I do care. But…I don’t need to break out the Sunday finest to go to the grocery store.

My hair loss was insidious. It started shedding a week before my second treatment. It seemed a little more than normal but hey not too bad. A day before my second treatment, I started noticing some clearly defined thinning at my crown. But, it was still workable. Not too shabby. So why worry.

It was after the second treatment where it started falling out in droves. And it gets everywhere. As a woman, you think you shed like a Yeti as it is. But when you’re losing all your hair, it’s incredible how much hair there is. It probably would’ve made quite a number of squirrel nests. I wish I would’ve thought to hook up the squirrels in my neighborhood.

The good thing about my husband being a hairdresser is that he’s been able to cut and style my hair so that I could keep it as long as I could. But, the day finally came, over a month later where I couldn’t ignore it anymore. There was no amount of hair covering magic that was going to work.

So, we cut my hair Rachel Maddow short as Josh calls it. And, let my hair continue to fall. I couldn’t bring myself to shave it. The finality of it; it’s too much for me to deal with.

I still have more hair than Jason Voorhees had when he was a kid. Sooo, I guess that’s something. I also have two kick ass wigs. One is a half wig made from my hair and Vanessa’s.

I wish I could rock the bald look proud. But, I’m not there. Seeing myself with hair, helps me see myself as I was. It helps me feel closer to when I was healthy.

Sometimes, when I wake up or when I walk by a mirror, I’ve forgotten and am taken back by my Darth Vader after his mask gets taken off look. Then I remember, man, what a bummer.

As annoyed as I could get with my Cuban-fro, my bangs that never behaved, my hair’s love of frizz, I miss my hair.