When I first met Jon — it was the year we both turned thirty — he was exactly what I was looking for in a guy.
Long hair. Mustache. An apartment on San Francisco’s hip Telegraph Hill. And in his living room, an American flag with a peace symbol where the stars should be. He was a 197os North Beach counter culture dude, and a cute one.
What I didn’t much notice at the time, nor did I care, was this: although Jon had an abundance of hair covering his ears and heading on down toward his shoulders, there wasn’t much of it on the top of his head.
The Eyes Were Blue and Kind
This man was balding, no doubt about it. Nature would take its course. Jon would get balder and balder as the years went by. But what did I care? The eyes were blue and kind, the lips — well, they were luscious.
And sure enough, by the year 2020 as Jon and I were getting ready to turn 79 and after that 80, Jon’s hair had pretty much disappeared. We hadn’t seen his curly golden locks since the turn of the millennium.
The American flag with its peace symbol had survived the decades; it was on display in our den. But the mustache and the hair were long gone. My husband was officially bald.
Or so we thought. In fact, Jon’s hair, what there was of it, had simply gotten shorter and shorter over the years as each new hairdresser opted to crop his hair closer and closer to his head.
Neither Jon nor I had noticed the incremental change. We had our minds on other things. Kids. Jobs. Aging parents. The poison oak under the magnolia tree.
My Husband Was Bald — And Then He Wasn’t
But then, in March, 2020, when the covid shutdown rolled around, Jon did what most people in our neighborhood did — he stopped going to the hairdresser. Soon, there was curly, blond — OK silvery — hair puffing out around his ears and rippling down his neck.
It was hair. Jon had hair. Lots of it. My husband was not bald after all.
A year later, as Covid-19 fears and restrictions let up, many hairdressers opened up for business, but Jon put off making an appointment. He let me cut his hair, just a bit. He liked his silvery curls. And so did I.
And so, on February 19, 2021, when Jon died unexpectedly of a pulmonary embolism, it was with with the head of hair — most of it — that I’d fallen for in 1971.
Note to long-time readers. Yes, the first part of the “my husband was bald and then he wasn’t” story was told here back in September, 2020, when Covid-19 was rampant and Jon’s hair was still growing out.
Meanwhile, why do I write these often so painful stories? I had some thoughts on that topic back in 2013 in “Writing the Personal Essay — Forget the Good. Go for the Bad and the Ugly.”
I’ve changed my mind about one thing since I wrote that piece in 2013: I’m not sure every personal essay needs an aha moment. Sometimes all it needs is time together with a reader.
