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OKAY: EFFLUVIUM. Now that I'm ready to begin, I don't quite know why I suggested it--that I tell you my tale about learning this word. (I just kind of blurted it out. Now I'm dragging my feet.) Maybe it's because, at the time of my learning, this word sounded better than music to my ears. The man who explained it, I gladly would have fallen at his feet and kissed him (had it been an appropriate action, and I not a young teenager). Before I go on, however, I should also say this: regardless of the positive aspect it carries for me now, effluvium is not a good term for the tree's outpouring . It just doesn't do justice to that lovely rain of seeds. (And the truth is...[ducking my head in slight embarrassment]...those bits of nature blanketing the driveway were not produced by the Copper Beech, but came from the lowly Maple across the yard. Even so.)

Back to my story: Sloughing off is what was going on when I brushed my hair, and I brushed my hair often as a young teenager. Current wisdom had it in that long-ago day that one hundred strokes with the brush was just the ticket to lustrous and lovely hair, and many a fancy hairbrush set was gifted to many a maiden (Oh, I remember mine well--dear me, it could still, even now, be there in my attic--that weirdly impractical brush with its short hard bristles and long thin handle, the matching mirror and over-sized comb in their pretty pink box). However,back then I couldn't think of brushing my wavy mane so excessively--by the twenty-ninth stroke it was already a greasy mess. But far worse than that, when I groomed it at all, it had begun responding by falling out! It was with more and more trepidation I fiddled with my hair, and afterward cringed as I pulled great wads of it from comb or brush.

"Oh, Mama," I wailed to my mother, "I'm going to go bald!" I just knew it was true. Running amok, my imagination had me worrying with every fiber (no pun intended...or, yeah, maybe so). At night I would lie awake and try to imagine my life without hair--However was I going to endure? I was never going to make it through high school, that much was certain; I'd have to go into seclusion, be privately tutored. After that, alas, dating and marriage would be out of the question. My lot would be life as a recluse.

(A note from American history: At the time, we were entering the Age of Hair. Its virtues were extolled from the rooftops [well, from transistor radios like mine, anyway.] Men didn't willingly shave their heads; as for women--double gasp, and hand to the heart--it was totally unheard of! That's right, NO ONE was making a statement with baldness. Any beautiful hair one possessed, gleaming and streaming or ratty and matty, flaxen or waxen, bangled or tangled... [yep, the Cowsills sang it] one wished to keep it. And desperately, so did I!)
"I made an appointment for you," Mama said, (bless her heart, my dear mother) "We'll go and see what a dermatologist thinks."

And...here's the moment--the moment I first heard that word I've been yammering about, because 'Telogen Effluvium', that's what he thought. "You have Teal-o-jin Eff-loo-ve-um," he taught me to say it. "It's part of the natural cycle of hair. You see, sometimes it gets stuck a little too long in the sloughing-off phase, especially when hormones are changing. You'll see lots of hair falling out, that's effluvium. But then, it keeps growing back in. You won't go bald, my dear. Not any time soon."

I won't?!! (Here's where I would have been falling at his feet.) Oh, Dr. Watkins, I won't?! I'll be keeping my hair?! I'll be staying in school?! I might even date? I can go on living a normal life?!! (well, not that I'll ever be normal, but...) Oh! Dr. Watkins! (Now's when I would have kissed the dear doc)


So there you have it, Reader Dear. Both this word and its origin in my brain remain with me to this day (along with the beauty and the splendor and the wonder of my hair...!)



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