The Old, Weird, Raging Side of my Head

The left side of my head has gone very strange. When I was just 24 years old, I discovered grey hairs up there. I still remember the horror of that realization: I was staring into the small mirror in the small bathroom under the creaky stairs of the old house in Harrisburg where I had recently moved. I pulled them with a morbid fascination, and they would just come out, that easy--wiry, tough, silvery-blond, streaking back like a moonbeam of doom along the left front of my head.

I called Mom in a panic and told her I had a grey streak, and reminded her I was only 24 years old. She asked what side of my head it was on, and I told her. Apparently it was hereditary. "Ah, the McKean streak," she said, as if that made it all okay that the vicissitudes of Time had already clamped their hoary hands upon my young brow.

Over the years I have grown to accept and even like the grey streak. It has stayed only a streak, and sometimes looks blond. Josh likes it, as it reminds him of Rogue from X-Men. I appreciate it as a means of vexing my manipulative hairstylist, who continually attempts to a sell me on more expensive hair appointments, and I have been successful in putting him off these past 2 years.

What I have not grown to accept is the "weird" manifestations on the left side of my head. There are two--one is quite benign; the other far more malignant and menacing. The benign oddity is a little tuft of hair that refuses to grow more than about 3 inches long. It stubbornly trails down the left side of my neck when I wear my hair in a pony tail, too short to make it up into the hair tie, and too weird to curl prettily. It just hangs there, like an askew rat-tail on scrawny little boy from the '80s.

As for the malignant oddity--I had thought that going grey at age 24 was bad enough, but I certainly, in my wildest nightmares, had not banked on going bald at 29. Yes, it's true--I have lost a significant amount of hair on the left side of my head.

It was two days before Valentine's Day, and I was blow-drying my hair. Josh was playing soccer. I had brushed the left side of my hair straight up to dry it, trying to avoid the annoying natural curl that tends to spring up along the sides if I don't dry it vigilantly, and I was shocked to find an expanse of pallid white skin stretching up above my ear where hair should be. I checked bilaterally (a phrase I learned in Sports Medicine in high school), and sure enough, the right side of my head had hair all the way down to and around the ear. My left ear sat with its head utterly exposed, surrounded by an island of baby smooth, heartbreakingly hairless skin.

I didn't know what to do, other than text Josh and ask him if he would still love me if I went totally bald on one side of my head (which I'm sure has been cataloged with other of my "crazy wife" texts/voicemails). Then I went to the mall and started buying things, all the while haunted by a windy feeling above my left ear.

After weeks of moaning like a banshee over every long curly hair hanging ominiously from the bookcase or the couch or nestled in the sink, I eventually chatted with my doctor about it, and sure enough, it was certainly not an uneven bilateral hairline, like I hoped. The diagnosis was "alopecia areata," a result of my Hashimoto's thyroiditis (it would, of course, be named after a Japanese man), wherein the world's most idiotic immune system has gone beserk against our own perfectly healthy body tissues. Apparently my very own asinine but unfortunately well-armed antibodies hurled themselves, giggling and slobbering, into a wild melee against our unsuspecting, outmanned thyroid gland and then turned their clumsy, bloody paws against our very own hair follicles. Friendly fire of the worst kind. Morons. Thus stands my scientific understanding of what has gone on to make me not only dependent on synthetic hormones for the rest of my life but also look like a creepy witch from Roald Dahl's book (my brothers-in-law who are well-learned in the arts of medicine may see cause for correction in my analysis of the situation, but that's the best I can do).

All this leads me to the third adjective--the rage. Apparently the treatment for bald spots is to shoot the head up with corticosteroids. So a few days ago I went to the doctor and sat there while she pumped steroids into my skull. I also have a corticosteroid cream that I get to rub all over my bald spot every morning and night. Now I'm greying, balding, and full of fury like never before. If only I could launch a javelin or two at my misfit antibodies.

*****

JD here. I initially feared what my wife would be transformed into when I heard "steroid injections" -- my initial thought was Starla from Napolean Dynamite ("Forget about it!"). Luckily, I realized that the origin of this fear was some combination of: 1) the fact that Barry Bonds was currently on trial for use of anabolic steroids, thus placing me in that mindset when I heard "steroids"; and 2) my complete ignorance about medical terminology, and medicine in general. Realizing your fears are founded on stupidity rather than reality is ALWAYS a relief.


As for the Rogue from X-Men thing, I was an impressionable 11-year old when the original FOX cartoon came out -- can you blame me?

My Husband, the Somnabulistic Acrobat and Linguist

Marriage has made clear that Sleeping Josh and Sleeping Ann Marie are complete foils to Awake Josh and Awake Ann Marie. Whilst awake, Josh is both physically and vocally relaxed; he doesn't fidget much, he never babbles. I am someone who has never been able to keep still since the moment I burst forth upon the world. I fidget and wiggle habitually; I chatter at trifles.

This contrast between our two modes of movement was made clear the first time Josh took me on a date to the movies. He sat like a rock for two hours, blinking occasionally. I shifted positions about every thirty seconds--left leg crossed over right; then right over left, then slumped a bit in the chair, then cross-legged, then knees pulled up against my chest, then one ankle under my bum, then repeat the whole experience (for two hours). (For clarification, the movie was Terminator Salvation. One possible explanation for my lack of movement may have been because I was paralyzed with disappointment.)

Sleeping, however, is an entirely different story. I sleep like the Bride of Dracula--immobile, flat on my back, with my hands crossed over my heart (a little creepy, I know, but it's realy quite comfortable). Over the Christmas holidays I spent a night apart from Josh while he was visiting his family in North Carolina. I lay down on my side of the bed, leaving his side smooth and unruffled. I awoke eight hours later in precisely the same position, with nary a wrinkle on the covers.

Josh sleeps like a circus troupe. He moves, flails, rolls, twitches, murmurs, talks, and advances across the bed like the Romans across Europe, leaving me squished behind a fragile Hadrian's Wall at the edge of the mattress. The other night I awoke (lying flat on my back, of course, only taking up as much space as the width of my body) to find that at least 3/4 of my pillow had been commandeered by a tousled pile of mighty black hair (and its slumbering owner). It took more than gentle remonstrating to get him to a conscious enough state to roll back to his side of the bed.

My favorite moments, however, are the strange verbal explosions. Josh's capacity for speaking gibberish (or Ewokese) has been well-documented, and I can testify that he reverts back to his language of yesteryear when sleeping. Once, while waking up from a three-hour nap on the couch, he exclaimed, "Is that you, Mama?" (I wasn't sure how to take that one . . .) And then one night several weeks ago, I awoke to some thrashings and mutterings. Josh was lying on his back, with both hands behind his head. He was jerking from side to side, jabbering with each turn. I couldn't make out a word of the babble, until he suddenly burst out with this: "I'm really getting to have a great voice for radio."

I chuckled, scribbled it down, and resumed my creepy vampire pose whilst my DJ of Dreams somersaulted on to somnabulistic bliss.

*****

JD here. I'm not surprised AM resorted to the banal, Western-oriented Roman analogy about me "invading" her side of the bed, but I think a more accurate metaphor in this case, given my Asian makeup, would either be Genghis Khan sweeping across the steppes of central Asia; or, for extra credit points in proper use of metaphors, Imperial Japan bringing the Pacific into what they called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. But whatever. Who am I to critique?

To compliment AM on what she portrayed accurately, describing her sleeping "mannerisms" (if you can call complete inactivity a mannerism) as being like Dracula's Betrothed was spot-on. And creepy. Hence why I stow cloves of garlic stowed under my pillow. And why I sleep with a sharpened, wooden stake in one hand; gun with chambered silver bullet in the other (wait... I believe I am muddling monsters here. Well, you can never be too safe when you think your wife is about to plunge her incisors into your neck and make you part of the Walking Dead at any moment. But I digress.)

I take pride in my active yet nocturnal and unconscious lifestyle. I'll have to share about the one time, while sleeping, that I jumped off the top bunk of a set of bunk beds and landed on my feet. LIKE A CAT.

Recurring Series: Clumsy Adventures by AM #1

As a child I was infamous for my clumsiness. I was one of those sweaty kids that ran everywhere without the dexterity and agility to avoid obstacles like furniture, puddles, gravel, or my little brother's large skull. I have more memories than I can count that begin with a routine action and end with my mother's fuzzy, frantic face leaning over my inert body.

There was the time in Italy when it rained and Sarah's bedroom flooded, and I ran to get a towel and ran back in with the towel onto the wet marble floor, and then I remember no more. Or the time when I was bouncing around in Jeff's crib with him, and wanted to grab the blue plastic cup that was sitting on the low table beside the crib, and I remember leaning and reaching down for it, and then I remember no more, other than the vague sounds of mother and sisters screaming. Then there was the time when Jeff had climbed up onto the kitchen counter, and I had the bright idea of catching him to help him get down. Jeff was 2 years younger but a sturdy lad with a sizable noggin, and I remember standing there with arms outstretched while he jumped, and then I remember no more.

The coup de gras of the Italy years may have been the time when Mom was late to go visiting teaching, and in my efforts to be helpful, bellowed: "I'll shut the van door, Mom!" and proceeded to do so while somehow leaving my left ring finger in the path of the closing door. I do remember how that one played out--the screams, the panic, the rush to the hospital, my own disgust over the next few weeks while watching my nail blacken and fall off.

I shall leave the England years, the woeful Bothell years of puberty, and the painful mission years of Brazilian cobblestones for another time. This is all meant to be background to what I know will be a recurring series on the blog: unaccountable, inexplicable acts of overt and embarrassing clumsiness by Ann Marie (Josh will not be contributing, as he is the coordinated part of this duo), this time without the excuse of being a toddler, child, or pubescent, when I was fairly new at operating a human body, or at figuring out what to do with extremely large feet.

No, I have definitely been an adult now for a good decade and a bit, and have no excuse for any of the events, present and future, that I will share with you.

The one I feel driven to share happened this past week in the breakroom at work. I had gone there with the intent of getting more ice for my water glass and topping off my water bottle, which was about 3/4 full. I stood up to the water machine, and instead of leaving the bottle upright and sticking it under the spout, I proceeded to (literally) upend the bottle, sending an Old-Testament-like gush upon the floor. The bizarre part of the event was that there was no clumsy fumbling; no losing my balance and letting go of the bottle or anything--no, like a strange, even-keeled robot, standing completely still, I tipped the mouth of the bottle down and poured it all out onto the floor. The really awkward part was that the guy who works down the hall in contracts was standing about 18 inches away, filling his coffee mug, and observed the whole thing. He watched me mop up the puddle I'd made, leaving me to say the thing I have found myself saying many times over the years, which still really doesn't do anything to make it all less awkward: "Well, at least it was just water, right?"

*****

JD here. I have nothing to add.

The Problem of Naming (Pilot Entry)

It was no small task deciding on name for this blog.  In fact, I think we almost gave up on the blog because we could not decide on a name for it.  The Herculean laboriousness of the experience caused me to reflect on the whole issue of naming and identity; how it is that we define ourselves and would like to see ourselves represented to others.

“The McDaltons” seemed too drab.  So I thought about symbols of our separate ethnic cultures—something like “Whisky and Soy” or “The Eastern Shamrock,” but those were rejected for obvious reasons.

Then Josh asked me if there was some quote from one of my favorite authors that would do, so I tried to think back on the graduate school days. All that came to mind was John Stuart Mill’s “stupidity is in the world all over”—hardly an encouraging title—and two winners from Thomas Hardy: “Intelligent Intercourse” and “Somnambulistic Hallucination,” two philosophical ideas which, when taken out of their 19th century context, could draw the wrong type of readership.

Then Josh suggested we follow the old fairy tale binary titling format after the manner of “Beauty and the Beast.”  The obvious choice for Josh was “rogue,” for various reasons (the X-Men connection not being one of them, although Jimmy’s suggestion of “Jubilee and Rogue” was appreciated).  We had a much harder time picking a word for me.  Here we ran up against the unfortunate sexism that is too-often implicit in language—there were numerous descriptors for the male that managed to be edgy and complimentary (rogue, rascal, swashbuckler, renegade, maverick).  All the lexically interesting descriptors for the female were, shall we say, reductive: jade, wench, trollop, hussy, slattern, etc.

We waded through some Greek goddesses and literary heroines, but those were quickly discarded as well.  Capricious, mostly one-dimensional, and kind of neurotic, we tossed out Athena, Daphne, Persephone, Cleopatra, Aphrodite, and Dido. 

We thought maybe a flower would work as my symbol, so I pulled out the old “Language of Flowers” book I got when I was 13 and interested in things like that.  It lists the name of a flower and its corresponding message in days of yore.  Unfortunately, all the traits I found flattering were attached to flower names that were hardly fitted for a blog title: “You are divine” = Cowslip; “Poetry” = Eglantine; “Strength of Character” = Gladiolus; “You Comfort Me” = Milk Vetch; “You are rich in attractions” = Ranunculus.

We thought about “The Lady and the Rogue,” but my sister Sarah wisely warned us that it might be a bit too “Quill and the Swordish” (for those that did not attend BYU or that choose not to remember, the Quill and the Sword was the name of the medieval club; if you saw anyone walking around in capes and chain mail on campus, you know what I mean).  Friend Mary Ann suggested “Rogue and Refined,” which we like well enough, but I felt like it was a bit limiting/untruthful on my side.  One cannot always be refined.

So then the other night Josh and my sister Michelle (aka Midge) and I were playing a typical came of Nertz.  By typical I mean it was marked by many verbal explosions from me and a few violent attempts on the person of my husband.  And thus was born the suggestion of “The Rogue and the Fury.”

Truth be told, “fury” is just as reductive as Jade, Refined, or Milk Vetch.  But I suppose it won out because (1) I tend to move at a rather furious pace most of the time; (2) Josh takes pleasure in purposefully inciting my wrath because he likes to tease (roguishly, of course) and therefore sees that side of me fairly often, but ultimately (3) because I liked the sound of it.

I think, sometimes, we like to present ourselves in a way that others may not see us—to defy expectations, or at least, to question them.  It’s boring to always do and say exactly what people think we will.  Maybe that’s why I prefer to tell the mission stories that sound more like war stories (i.e. those that involve damage inflicted on my person by disease, wildlife, and the elements), and why Josh likes to grow beards and mustaches and get perms (to be precise, that should read “get perm,” as he’s only had one).  Perhaps naming ourselves is not just about finding the trait or title that is most obvious, overtly symbolic, or precisely representative.  Perhaps it is just as much about searching out the lesser-known, imperfect, and idiosyncratic parts of our identities, and letting them speak.  So long as it has a nice ring, of course.

*****

JD here. So the christening of the blog was quite the ordeal -- as far as life ordeals go for me, I think I've ranked it somewhere between "Japanese people asking me if I was mentally retarded when I spoke Japanese" and "sitting through the third Twilight movie in the theater, where I could not make snarky comments out loud." There were points where it felt a little bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears and nothing we brainstormed was 'just right.' It was all 'too' something or other: 'too forced,' 'too Greek,' or 'too lame' (sometimes the latter two are synonymous. Total burn on Hellenism!) It made me dread the Herculean task it will one day be to name our first child -- I mean, if we can't even name a digital medium like a blog, then how are we supposed to name a living, breathing human being? (While on the topic, my personal vote for our first boy is still for 'Scotch', but AM continues to dispute this with rhetoricals like, "Do you really want to name our child after an alcoholic beverage?", as if this would dissuade me. Silly girl.)

Regardless, I like the name we've settled on here, as it properly conveys the wrath that I incur every time I act roguish or make a snide comment. Just kidding. But not really.

Shameless plug for the entry: see the family's observations on The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.