Preference Number Four

Preference Number Four

Barbara never went out of the door -- to work, church or to visit family or friends -- without her hair colored and in place.   She knew that I loved her shoulder-length brown hair. The dark brown, deeper-than-chestnut color, almost black.  She tells me that she gets it out of a bottle.

 

"Preference number 4, Micheal," she told me one evening while I was admiring her hair. "I am too young to be one of those shiny white-haired old maids. I get my hair down every two weeks -- whether I need it or not."

 

There's so many things I enjoy -- in addition to her dark brown hair and the matching eyebrows.

 

I really enjoy her dinner meals. The few cans she opens are tempered with the made-from-scratch everything else.  She loved to travel and see things, but she also is a wonderful learner.  The woman loves to read, and can get around pretty well on a computer. Because of her nursing skills gained when she was younger, there is no injury or boo-boo that could not be healed by her gentle hands, the right combinations of medicines and bandages, and the kind kiss over the injury which can only come from a mother. Her macraméd and crocheted clothing and table decorations garnered her blue ribbons at the county and state fairs in her younger years but she has not entered anything since, well, since she came down with cancer the first time.

 

I was not with Barbie the first time she succumbed to cancer, but from her descriptions, I would not wish it upon my worst enemy. She explained it all to me -- to which I not only felt nauseous, but also very sorry for the woman twelve years older than me explaining all of this.  She then shook me and told me "don't you EVER feel sorry for me, Micheal!  I am in this mess and I'll get myself out of this mess too.  All I want from you is some of your love."

 

She had it -- and more. When the Army recalled me out of the "holding group" and sent me to Afghanistan, she found out where I was stationed and sent me a box of homemade chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.  Every week. Her note in each box reminded me "exercise, don't give your bosses nor your soldiers a hard time, write - for me and others, and share these -- I didn't make them just for you!"  I did everything she wrote and told me to.

 

The week before my re-deployment, my email box was full of home mailing addresses and requests for cookies to be sent to them, with comments like "you're a lucky man to have a woman who definitely loves you -- loves you enough to send you things ALL of the time!" along with other salty and sugary comments.

 

The reunion after a year and four months apart was grand, with kisses and hugs and touches on the hands, shoulders and legs.  Lovemaking was a masterful art for Barbara, and she not only enjoyed the sexual acts but the candles, the jazz music from the crackling 24 hour public radio station in Charlottesville or the stronger station in Blacksburg which went off the air at midnight �" all of it added to her enjoyment. And she would wake me three hours later and encourage me to "do it again...do it all again please..."

 

Yeah, she had my love...and more.

 

I finished up the fifth book, and while waiting for the editing process to conclude, we went on the road. She patiently sat there at Scout shows, needles in hand, glasses to her face, as she knit one, pearled two while youth and adult Boy Scouting people visited and shook my hand. They bought more books than before, since now I was considered a "war hero" even though my contribution to the war effort was in sharing baked goods with others --including two General officers -- who thought that I was a "good egg".

 

The fifth book was finally approved, and Barbara selected the photo which graced the back cover.

 

The second onset of cancer, which was more progressive than the first, attacked her bones and skull.  I was in Atlanta, working yet another project for the Army which kept me away from Barbara -- and the hospital she was in.  She did not want me there any way.

 

"You need to work," she emailed, "I'll be fine.  And I told you so many times love, don't feel sorry for me. I'll get myself out of this and be back in your arms soon." She had a "no visitors" bar to her room.

 

The doctors told a different story -- once he confirmed that I was "family".

 

Barbara loved me, but for so many reasons -- more financial than religious or social or even mushy, sappy relationship reasons -- the only ring she would accept from me was a shirt with ring-around-the-collar for her to clean.

 

"I know you love me. You don't need to give me a ring, or a diamond necklace to prove it," she told me once after one of her dinners.  "If I had wanted to marry, I would have done so a long time before now."

 

"Barbara is a mess," the doctor told me over the phone.  "She's a charming woman -- but she's also been a challenge to us.  We have to do some surgery, and my thinking is that we'll going to find more cancers in other organs.  We're removing the portacath..."

 

That is when I knew things were serious.  That tube -- below her right breast -- has been my lifeline to her since the first night I discovered it while removing her brassiere.  I touched it and held my open hand over it as I kissed her.  She broke the kiss off long enough to tell me "don't push so hard on it...I don't want them digging it out!", then moved back to continue the kiss.

 

The portacath allows trained medical people -- including the former nurse Barbara -- to inject or connect medicines to her without opening up yet another "line" in her body. With the portacath, medicines find their way to where they need to faster. 

 

"She's been asking for hair dye. You know what kind, right?"

 

I nodded even though the person on the other end could not see my affirmation.

 

"I do. She never wants to have people to see her as one of those silver-haired women with very little hair."  I added, "and she's not an old woman."

 

"She's 60." the doctor stated. "And she needs to act like it."

 

"How old are you, Doc?  I'm 52 this year..."

 

"58."

 

"Do you really feel 58 -- or a lot younger?  I would say that Barbara has never felt more than 40 her entire life...well maybe the first time she got cancer."

 

"You got a point."

 

"I KNOW I've got a point.  You don't mess with momma there, Doc.”

 

"You come sometime tomorrow and bring that bottle of hair stuff with you...we'll let you see her for a few."

 

I called in sick the following morning, and grabbed my laptop and tossed it into the car.  I then went to Walgreens and stood as I looked among the various boxes of hair colorings.  I had forgotten the number. How could I forget what number it was -- and all of those shades of brown look similar to one-another.

 

I then looked at the boxes featuring the blondes on the cover.  There were colors there I never knew existed.  Wheat? That's not a color -- it's what one eats or processes. Winter frost. Champaign. Snowflake.

 

I moved my eyes back to the rows of brown-haired women.  The girl in the Walgreens red smock startled me.

 

"For you or someone else?"  After my nerves returned to Earth, she looked at me and added, "Sorry I startled you" and repeated her question.

 

"For my...my...girl" I responded. We never did establish a relationship title.  I have had "sweethearts", "honies", and "loves" before. The titles meant something significant to me -- to them, it was something they heard me address them by -- nothing more.

 

"What's her hair color?" the girl asked.  "Is she black or blonde?" 

 

Like that were the only two colors *I* could choose from.

 

"Brown. I can't remember what shade of brown, however...."  I looked at her for the first time...then past her at the camera counter.

 

"Wait!  Let me go out to the car and get something!" 

 

I walked out to the car, found my laptop bag and brought it in.

 

I opened the bag, removing the laptop and opening it on a nearby cosmetic counter and waited until after the software music finished its jingle.  I then looked back at the sales clerk as I explained, "About a year ago, I took a photo of Barbie -- that's her name --"

 

The young woman rolled her eyes.

 

"and I think that I can match it up with the boxes here."

 

The young woman walked over and as I moved the cursor around to open a folder containing photos, she matter-of-factly asked, "Why don't you just call and ask her?"

 

I looked at the girl, trying to think of some smart-assed comment to volley back toward her. She's right. I could just call Barbie.

 

"No I can't. She's in a hospital and being treated for cancer."  It was honest but made me look stupid.  Didn't I know my own girlfriend's hair color?  Yes -- it's BROWN. Dark brown.

 

I opened the photos and looked.  I picked up box after box of various products and attempted to compare them to the images of Barbara on the screen.   After the seventh box, I gave up.

 

"Sorry for wasting your time," I said, as I shut my computer down and returned it to the bag.

 

"We're open 24 hours a day," she said.

 

"Thanks."

 

I walked out to my car, got in it and drove the several hundred miles north and east to the regional hospital in northern North Carolina. Thirty-two miles along Interstate 20, I said to myself:

 

"Maybe I'll remember the stupid Preference number four number while I'm on the road..."