Balding

No one was quicker to catch on to the fact that I was 50 than my own body, and now I was balding. It wasn’t even gradual, but drastic and sudden. My follicles had just reviewed their contract and realized their obligation was up. You know how strawberries can detect the minute they’ve left the grocery store and turn instantly gray and fuzzy? It was like that. My scalp knew the instant I turned 50 and just stopped trying. It was a full-fledged walkout.

Insurgents had been mounting an attack in other bodily regions for a while now. Muscles on the backs of my arms had turned to flappy patches of fleshy aspic. A chicken’s gullet sagged on my neck where taut skin had once been. My stomach bubbled up out of the top of my pants like a cauldron. Even the toenails on my right foot were preparing for battle, boarding up windows with thick yellow fungus.

I awoke to the fact of my balding as I awake to most things: jolting suddenly, like Frankenstein’s monster when lightning strikes. While in the bathroom for the fourth time in three hours at 4:50am, under the harsh light of the bathroom mirror, I realized that my temple was larger than it was the day before. Yup. balding.

Give my body an inch, and it will take a mile. I had just been leaning toward the idea of quitting monthly hair coloring in favor of my natural salt and dishwater brown. I had resigned myself to the idea that my midlife wardrobe would need to shift, hauling sleeveless tops, open-toed shoes, and too-tight pants to St. Vinny’s. I let my guard down for a few moments, and my hair made its move. “Now, we’ve got her, boys. Hit her where it hurts.” It was a sweep-the-leg kind of ruthlessness.

The most insidious thing was that it took advantage of the fact that I wasn’t as observant as I was a few years ago. I didn’t notice right away. I cajoled myself into thinking, “Maybe my forehead’s always been this high and lopsided, and I just never looked closely.”

As the leader of my body, I did what all warped, dysfunctional leaders do: I looked for a scapegoat. It was my brushing techniques, the heat of the curling iron, the blow dryer, my shampoo. I’d started taking testosterone supplements. Maybe that was to blame.

The way midlife snuck up on me pissed me off, if you want to know the truth. All this time, I’d been waiting for my peak moment, and it seemed I’d missed it. Acne was replaced by wrinkles without a reprieve from having one or the other or both at the same time. While I was busy trying to hold off looking like my grandmother, it was my grandfather I was headed toward at breakneck speed with his sprouty tufts of gray hair. I now recognized him now in other places, like the way my belly flopped over the top of my pants and the way I had the urge to scratch myself when I thought no one was looking. But people noticed. They always noticed.

Throughout my 40s, I’d been working to graciously let go of youthful beauty, and I was so proud of my progress. In fact, my pride in my own humility was pretty overwhelming.

I’d decided against the tattoo I’d always wanted, acknowledging that I’m not gritty enough to pull it off, and let’s face it, I’m too indecisive to choose something that permanent.

I’d stopped using my teen son’s catch phrases because they felt clumsy and awkward in my mouth, not to mention that neighbor kids made fun of me.

I “would never” have elective surgery to cling to my youth, because “I’m not that vain” and, oh yeah, I can’t afford it, and it scares me.

Instead of clinging to physical beauty, I was working on being interesting, but jeez, I have limits.I sure as heck can’t pull off bald. Who was I kidding?

And for the love of all things holy, what’s next? If I can somehow manage to find some easy, palatable remedy for hair loss or accept my new comb-over, the insurgents will no doubt embark on a hostile takeover of, what next, exactly? Sometimes, between spurts of humility and perspective, there’s a nagging fear of what unforeseen, age-related ailment awaits me next.

I’m trying to come up with the epiphany here. The life-lessonish big finish to this self-absorbed rant escapes me, except maybe for this.

I was worried about the small things when something bigger was coming. Maybe this big thing is just another small thing. Maybe it’s all small, and I ought to stop squandering every moment on small stuff.

I was waiting for my life’s peak moment. Meanwhile, I squandered many moments that were “now”, until they were “then”. At the moment of discovery, the hair loss was huge; it still is. But who knows what’s around the bend that will make this seem trivial? Maybe the hair was the small thing, or the loss of my waist was the small thing, or the countless losses of self that came before that were all the small things that were just meant to point me to the big thing.

Maybe the loss of self in a thousand tiny steps all my life is the whole flipping point. I think my job is to let go of myself, one grip at a time, in exchange for something bigger that had nothing to do with me.

This epiphany won’t stop me from adding to my private Pinterest board called Hair Loss Remedies. But it is a good reminder to look not closer at me or within me, but beyond me. That’s where the truly interesting is and has been all along. Thank God, because I’ve grown so bored with me.