I’m an urban, half Italian cynic with a life-long affinity for black clothes and ethnic jewelry. Blond hair and pink ribbons have never been my style.

That’s why the woman in my profile photo seems as much a stranger to me as she is to you.

For instance, those aren’t my eyebrows. And that’s not my hair. It’s the most recent “brown” wig I’ve ordered from print and online catalogs since I was diagnosed with breast cancer last February.

The first wig I sent for was a match for my usual cut and looked, in print, like a match for my natural color too; a dark but not too dark “warm” brown with “gold highlights” that the wig maker called “Buttered Toast.” But the wig that showed up was all butter, no toast. Not even a crumb. Customer Service happily exchanged it for a more mundane looking and sounding “Medium Brown” – which, mysteriously, turned out to be exactly the same shade of golden, Republican spokeswoman blond as the first wig.

After that disappointment, I gave up my search for the “right” wig for awhile. But four months after my last chemotherapy treatment the natural hairs on my head are still nearly as sparse as feminists at a Palin rally. That means that while I’m now “cancer free” and feeling healthier every day, for months more I’ll be wearing turbans and scarves that shout “cancer patient” to the world, and, even more disturbing, reveal my strong but previously unsuspected resemblance to Dame Edith Sitwell -- early 20th Century British poet and eccentric turban devotee.  

That’s why two weeks ago I gave it another try -- with a new catalog and, at a fire sale price, a new “get real” shade; “medium brown with 10% gray.”

 That’s the “brown” you (don’t) see in the photograph.

One friend quipped that it is brown – "fundamentalist Church Lady Brown.” 

Another said, “I think the universe is trying to tell you something.”

If it is, it’s the same point the universe has been trying to hammer home for awhile; that even cancer free I’m not the same person I was ten months ago.

Some day my hair will come back. But there are things I have lost forever; my innocence of pain, my denial of mortality, my expectation that there is plenty of time – and that I will always have the energy and ability to make good use of that time.

I’ve gained things too; a more direct understanding of the suffering that others endure and the frustration of disability and dependence. Plus, a realization of the huge amount of mental effort, and loving support, required to heal, or to simply live with, the body’s worst wounds and betrayals.

Most important, I’ve gained a new sense of urgency – and, an awed and grateful awareness of all the love and friendship that supports me.

The person I was is gone. The person I will be is still to be determined. So for now I’m an unfamiliar woman in a blond wig. A woman, I hope, who is more than ever willing to try something new, in a wig that I  think makes me look a little like Kim Novak -- and, of course, like a woman  old enough to know who Kim Novak is.