6 ST THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020A few weeks ago, I gave myself a crew cut. I
didn’t know how long it would be before I
could visit a barber and figured I might as
well do it myself.
I took my electric clippers into the back-
yard of our house on Martha’s Vineyard,
where we live year-round. It didn’t take
long, a few passes around my head as the
hair piled up on the grass. Afterward, I gath-
ered the clumps and placed them at the
edge of the yard near the bird feeder as an
offering of nesting material.
It felt good to rub my hand on my nubby
scalp. As a boy I liked to get crew cuts dur-
ing wrestling season; they made me feel
tough and focused. My new crew cut helped
me feel that way again, which is good, be-
cause on so many days during this pan-
demic I feel like I want to crawl under the
bed and hide.
I am also sad about my new look.
Not because my 12-year-old daughter
cried out in shock, telling me I looked bald.
Not because my teenage son told me my
ears were massive and that I looked like an
elf. No, I felt bad because I had shaved off a
special haircut, one I have enjoyed once a
year, every year, for the last decade.
In February, before the pandemic, I trav-
eled to Boston for a conference and paid my
annual visit to a fancy salon on Newbury
Street, where I sat at Elie Ferzli’s station.
Elie and I have known each other for a
decade but see each other just once a year,
so in total we have spent less than an hour a
day together for 10 days. We do not corre-
spond in between, and yet I count him as a
dear friend. I believe he feels the same way
about me.
I met Elie when my wife, Cathlin, was un-
dergoing treatment for breast cancer at
Massachusetts General Hospital. She had
begun chemotherapy and soon her hair
would fall out. Her team at the hospital had
sent us to a woman named Pat who owns a
salon on Newbury Street that specializes in
making wigs, both for cancer patients and
the transgender community.
When we arrived that evening, Pat met
us at the front desk and led us past the rows
of busy stylists. As we made our way to the
back, I was struck by how we were facing a
life and death diagnosis while all these
other people were seemingly enjoying nor-
mal lives of weekends and joy.
I cried often in those days, sometimes
quietly, sniffling to myself, and other times
explosively, the full force of what our lives
had become catching me unaware like a
sneeze. Sitting with Pat and Cathlin, talking
about wigs and baldness, was one of the
times I lost it. Excusing myself, I dashed
from the room, planning to walk the streets
until my tears had subsided.
But as I walked past the rows of beautiful
people, I saw a man standing beside an
empty chair. He smiled and motioned me to
sit. Without thinking, I did.
We didn’t talk much. Elie cut and I wept.
And he did not charge me.
A few weeks later, Cathlin’s hair fell out.
We thought it would be gradual, giving us
time to adapt, but cancer, we learned, is not
so orderly. It is chaos of a different kind,
filled with confusion and too much time to
think about worst-case scenarios.
Cathlin is a minister, so of course her hair
fell out on a Sunday just before church. A
neighbor shaved her head to even out the
clumps, and an hour later Cathlin preached
a sermon about delivering herself into a fire
of love in order to come out the other side,
forever changed but somehow stronger.
I did a lot of push-ups in those days, out-
side at night. Something about gripping the
cold earth with my hands felt comforting.
Chemotherapy was followed by a double
mastectomy and then months of radiation.
And then, finally, a cancer-free diagnosis.
At first Cathlin returned to Boston twice a
year for checkups and then once a year,
which she continues to this day. The trips no
longer fill us with dread, at least not the
heavy type that turns a normally busy and
loud family into a quiet one where even our
children would press pause on their exuber-
ance as they waited for their mother to re-
turn from Mass General with news. Now, so
many years and checkups later, it is merely
part of our routine.
On some level I envy Cathlin and her abil-
ity to stay in touch with the cancer team
who became our friends and are also re-
minders of the positive side of those dark
days. Being a caregiver to my wife and our
children, who were so young then, gave me
my first glimpse of becoming the man I had
always hoped to be.
But while my wife gets to see her oncolo-
gist and the nursing staff, I have Elie. Each
time I sit in his chair, we check in with each
other, which for the first few years mostly
meant Elie asking me how Cathlin was do-
ing. Then one year, when I called for my an-
nual appointment, I was told Ellie would be
out for several months. The receptionist
couldn’t tell me why. It would be another
year before he could tell me his story.
In June of that year, he learned he had
multiple myeloma, a disease that enters the
bloodstream and bone marrow. After che-
motherapy and stem cell treatments, he
had to protect his immune system by stay-
ing in isolation for four months, unable to
walk the streets or even hug his wife or son.
He told me this the next year while I sat in
his salon chair, looking at him in the mirror
before me. He was healthy again, movingabout with ease. Around us, customers and
their stylists carried on their own conversa-
tions, the hum of voices mixing with the
sounds of scissors and blow dryers.
The years piled up, and as our children
grew, Elie and I shifted from conversations
about preschool to grammar school to high
school. We grew beards and shaved them
off. My hair began to thin, and I worried
about going bald, less out of vanity than fear
of missing my annual visit with Elie.
I brought Cathlin to meet him and then
the children. When he met our daughter,
whose nickname is Pickle, Elie held out his
hand and said, “Nice to meet you, I’m Cu-
cumber.”
In February, when I sat down in his chair,
we started by checking on each other’s
health. I told him Cathlin was doing great,
but when I asked him if he was still fine, he
said, “Well, let’s define fine.”
Elie told me his cancer had returned but
the doctors were keeping it at bay with
twice a week chemo.
I looked him, incredulous. He seemed as
energetic as ever. “How are you still work-
ing?” I said. “When Cathlin had chemo, she
would lie in bed for days.”
“I don’t feel the effects,” he said. “Never
have. After treatments, I go play volley-
ball.”
Elie kept talking and cutting that cold
February day, telling me about the particu-lars of his disease, which would remain in
his body until new drugs were discovered.
He could get only one more bone marrow
transplant, but the doctors were saving that
heavy artillery for later. For now, it was
chemo and volleyball, a bizarre combina-
tion, but one that worked for him.
“Enough about this,” he said. “Let’s make
your hair smile.”
And we fell quiet, just the clipping of scis-
sors as I watched him from my perch. Cath-
lin may have her oncology team, but I have
Elie to remind me of those days, both the
bad and the good. I remembered pushing
my wife in a wheelchair through the hospi-
tal. She was bald and pale and weak as I led
her to the elevator for surgery. People
turned their heads and I could almost hear
them thinking, “There goes someone in
worse shape than me.”
Yet it was a golden time, too, filled with
fear and uncertainty but also beauty, when
trivialities evaporated, leaving only love be-
hind.
After the pandemic hit, I called Elie for
the first time in our long friendship. He re-
assured me that he was fine and able to still
do his chemo treatments through a sepa-
rate hospital entrance. We talked a little
longer, and I told him about my self-admin-
istered, backyard crew cut.
“I bet you look handsome,” he said.
I don’t, but it was nice to hear.MODERN LOVE
As He Cut My Hair, I Wept
He motioned for me to sit. We
barely spoke. He didn’t charge
me. I’ll never forget it.
But while my
wife gets to see
her oncologist
and the nursing
staff, I have Elie.
Each time I sit
in his chair, we
check in with
each other.
BILL EVILLEis the managing editor of The
Vineyard Gazette on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
By BILL EVILLEBRIAN REA“I can’t live in a bubble.” This from my 84-year-old mother, who raised me in a bubble.
Throughout my childhood, she feared elastic underwear cutting off my circulation,
pesticides, undercooked meat, idling cars, flea collars, germs and the cleansers that kill
them. My response was frank. “If you get this virus, you’ll go into a hospital and there’s
a good chance you’ll die there, alone.” We registered each other’s fear. She taught me
how to build a bubble around the people you love. I never thought it was the healthiest
expression. But maybe, right now, it is.JULIANNA BAGGOTTTiny Love Stories Living in a BubbleFor more readers’ stories and to submit your own: nytimes.com/tinylovestoriesWe’re open!
57 TH&BROADWAY