Off the Beaten Path
My husband’s sudden bald spot takes me on an uncharted trip
“Are you bringing toothpaste?” he asks, throwing things together last minute, while I’ve voted on each of my items for weeks.
“Yes.” I remove the redundant jumbo tube from his pile.
Having arranged our trip — airlines, hotels, dinners — my shiny new, first, last, forever husband feels heroic. Which will lead to medicinally-assisted hot hotel sex as we break-in foreign beds like dangerous strangers strewing clothes around the unfamiliar room. I look forward to waking up not knowing where we are, who he is, who I am and what the hell happened to my underpants.
I’ll thrill at his manhandling of my luggage, his computing of exchange rates, his negotiating at markets, his chatting up the cabbies, his tact with the tour guides. He’ll get teenaged. He’ll double my exaltation at monuments that dwarf us, natural wonders that exhilarate us, cuisines that amaze us, pantomimed conversations that tickle foreign hearts with humors like ours.
We’ve made it to the airport in ample time. We’re passing through Lufthansa check-in, pleased with our compact packing, our sleek wheeled luggage, our lightweight coats. And as he bends over to put a tag on his bag, I see it.
My face has a hot flash, forced into a new point of view. I’ve not seen him at this angle before, or at least lately. Maybe it’s just an illusion born of gravity and the forelock at the crown of his head. I look more closely.
My husband has a bald spot.
For a moment, I think I’m looking at the wrong man; but no, that’s the sweater I gave him for his birthday. I stare. I feel the urge to cry out, to run away. I can’t let on — it might shake his confidence. This must stay a secret between me and me. I’ll take a deep breath, get grounded, look again.
A patch of pink at the top of his head, where a shock of gray explodes energetically out of his scalp and divides in all directions is widening. Being shorter than he is, rarely higher up than he is, it’s my first evidence of his aging. It looks shy, naked, new.
It’s not the spot per se that makes me want to run and hide. It’s not that he’s any less adorable. It’s what it signifies. The map has changed with this new, life-size land-mark. No Waze will show us any way around it; Google has not yet charted this locale.
I didn’t factor in this development; that things that finally felt so fixed in my life with my marriage could erupt in flux; that things that seemed under control could get so swiftly unsettled. I’ve seen aging in myself, certainly. I’ve lost an inch in height. The skin of my thighs, which used to be taut, is not. My face, which used to be my calling card, is a falling card. Signs of decay no longer go away with a good night’s sleep, exercise, or my hairdresser. In fluorescent-lit mirrors, in others’ selfies, in shop windows, I’ve caught a glimpse of myself and gotten disoriented. Who is this aging person? This once confident woman looks a lot like my ninety-year-old mother.
I reconfigure how harsh my judgments can be, factoring in bad lighting, and reassure myself that no one sees me as skewed as I do. I smile to lift it all up, like for photos, although I rarely look this way outside them. In the hierarchy of biological needs, vanity vacillates between numbers two and three.
Wait. Maybe he’s already absorbed my many signs of erosion and is protecting me in the glow of his unconditional eyes, as I now plan to shield him in my white lies of love. But we always see the light in each other, so it’s not really deceit. It’s virtual surgery. It’s a reconstructive visioning. We believe what we re-see. That’s what love does.
He straightens up and smiles, gravity restored to his hair and head, and all returns to normal. And as we trudge along, I overly adore the back of him. I admire the socks I bought him as we de-shoe for TSA. I enjoy my public pat down as he watches — it’s erotic. It’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to lesbianism and he’ll get to a three-way beyond buying lightbulbs.
Seated cozily in coach, I take hold of the hand that looks so sexy in that wedding ring with which I bound him to me, and we buckle each other in. Mmm. Bondage. I thrill at the miracle of flight from my window seat, in which I can watch the exact moment that the velocity of this monstrosity makes it lift off, when the wheels retract and we are by some miracle airborne and Peter Pan powerful.
Five hours in — wined, dined, and movied — we doze. I tuck him in and pull a blanket over my eyes. At home, my husband and I sleep with a hut of pillows pulled over our faces. Ostensibly, it’s to block out light and the sound of tweeting yard birds and phone alerts come dawn. But for me, it’s also to hide my slackened countenance. I’m still bemused when he’s revealed by an accident of tossing or turning, as he is now; openmouthed, sad eyed, snoring gently by my side.
I sneak an extended peek and, without the animation of his huge presence, his face is funny, flaccid, his body like a marionette without a puppeteer, drooping on a hook, strings dangling, lifeless. But I give him a little kiss and like magic he reanimates with a world-changing grin that wipes away decades and restores him to his habitual handsome. I’m not sure he’s ever caught me in decomposing repose or, if he has, he’s never let out a peep about it.
Newlywed me still gets up first and tosses my hair into a casual-seeming style, balms my lips, freshens my breath, and gets back into the sanctuary of our cotton habitat for morning cuddles.
This is the deal. Marrying in our sixties, we signed up for it all. We looked in each other’s eyes, evaluated the ongoing attraction, the future, the dialogue, the humor, the extras, the liabilities, and so-the-fuck-whats and knew this person was worth the risk.
Since we met late in life, the milestones that most married have hit decades earlier will be all squashed together into maybe two decades for us, tops. When we married, childfree me became an instant stepmom to his two incredible kids in their twenties. I met all my stepson’s uniquely wonderful girlfriends. I went to college graduations in our first year and sang at my stepdaughter’s wedding soon after. Now I stalk her womb like a madwoman, seeking signs of fecundity, hoping she might soon make me a step-grandmother. It’s my latest biological need, which I’ve developed since we married, just when I thought all needs were satisfied. I got a bonus three brothers, two with wives and more amazing kids, and all their concomitant milestones fill our holidays with happy family events.
But all too soon, he and I will get old together, infirm together and, if we are lucky, die together at the exact same second, which would save our heirs a lot of aggravation sorting through our stuff, the double dose of sorrow notwithstanding. We already have adjoining compartments for our ashes in an oaken box, in the hopes of simultaneous death, as compensation for our lack of simultaneous orgasms at this stage, as compensation for having waited for each other so damn long.
Or if fate plays it the hardest, most probable way for him and me, one of us will nurse and bury the other. One of us will grieve alone as the other abandons us and scorches the earth as s/he goes. One of us will be left keening, wrenched in half, relentlessly seeking comfort, when no comfort will exist outside the other’s arms.
There was no choice for me but to love him, so there is no escape. I never dated a guy this old before, partly to avoid awareness of the inevitability of my own mortality, but also because I never found any older or younger ones this boyish and joyous. I fell all the way into love with this wonderful one for real. I remind myself that on a sane and sober day I found forever in this face. I knew I’d want to look at him every day, even when he pissed me off. Of all the men in the world, I have married only this one. I knew that the agonizing grief of losing each other would be worth it for the joy we’d have. I knew that as the loop of our lives was narrowed by age and the loss of our near and dears, sharing the center of it with him was the best fate I could imagine. I know that loving more double deep than we’ve ever loved will give us the courage to survive our lack of survival together.
We’ve landed in the Czech Republic and pull our blue bags from the merry-go-round filled with blank black ones, already excited by foreign accents saying ‘excuse me.’ I love looking at their unfamiliar faces, the guilelessness of eyes that aren’t from America. He bends over to get out his jacket, and I see it again. It is very real now. Embarrassed, I look away. I’d almost forgotten it amid our anticipation. I look again and linger, determined to get adjusted to it and what it means.
It’s a whole new thing about him to cherish.
Funny how the aging trip, with its sudden departures into unknowns for which one only plans in generalities; with its new language, which only medical professionals will translate for us; with the adaptations that will be demanded of us as time flies by, is so much less welcome than the other surprises I so treasure when we journey to new places. Where the hell is my embrace of spontaneity, my openness to growth, to coping with the un- knowns along the way?
Missing in action at this moment.
Could his hair maybe grow back and cover up the bald spot? Maybe it just dried funny and tomorrow it will be fine. Maybe he scratched at it like a cat at a flea, and this is temporary. Maybe there’s a pill I can slip into his food to make it stop. I strenuously search for justification for denial. But wait. Could hair loss be happening to me, too? No. I have a fleet of intimate workers with whom I consult expensively who can negotiate work-arounds on my hair, at least for a little while longer.
I wouldn’t want him to work around. I loathe work-arounds on men — comb-overs, plugs like bristle brushes, toupees, dye jobs — though I admire the work-arounds on women and the artists who accomplish them. I have a big double standard there. I like my man ‘au naturel,’ courageously facing the unknown, protecting me from my wussy fears of the onslaught of aging. My husband is my brave explorer. I know he will carry this emblem with grace.
At that moment, I fall deeply in love with the bald spot atop him and decide to adopt it. It’s a whole new thing about him to cherish. It will be my new pet, a hidden motherless child I didn’t know existed. It’s young, vulnerable, innocent and pink, like an infant’s derriere. Dear little spot.
He straightens up, hoisting his bag, and offers one of his world-illuminating grins, surprised to see me gazing so tenderly at him, tears cresting in my eyes.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he says. “Here we go!”
