This past weekend my hand must have brushed across my head a thousand times. It was so automatic, I didn’t realize I was doing it. On Sunday afternoon my husband finally said, ever so matter-of-factly, “Your hair is growing back.”

“Really?” I asked. “So that’s why it feels different. But I can’t see anything.”

Sure enough, when I inspected my head in the mirror I could see peach fuzz about an eighth of an inch high. Poking through the few strands of hair I never did lose through chemotherapy, the new hair is totally white. Doctors tell patients that the new growth can come in completely grey. It can take up to two years for the full pigment to come back.

There are other signs of rebirth. I managed to hold onto my eyelashes (some women lose those, too). But the lashes that had fallen out before my chemotherapy regimen began had created open spaces. Now there are tiny stubs where the lashes are coming back.

The first sign of regrowth I noticed was in the fingernails. They’d turned red and looked a bit brittle during the time their growth was interrupted. Now, near the cuticle, there is a quarter-inch of healthy color where they are growing out.

It’s odd to see the body regenerate. My husband likens it to watching a baby’s growth. The hair coming in. Cutting the first tiny fingernails. Observing the little one for every sign of maturation, of becoming a real person.

The difference is that a baby doesn’t know what’s happening. Adults do. I doubt I’ll ever take my full head of thick hair or my healthy fingernails for granted again. Lord, please make them grow as fast as you can!