Our youngest is marrying tomorrow; yesterday the last of my hair fell out, victim of my first chemotherapy treatment. Expected but dreaded. I find you staring across the dining room table at me and I snap, “What are you looking at?” You come over and place both hands on my head. Your voice and your hands are achingly tender as you caress my baldness and you croon, “I’m just noticing — you have the perfect head. It’s the perfect shape and the perfect size. You could be a head model.” Then you dub me your model wife. Maybe bald is beautiful.
Carol Alfred is an educator and writer who lives in beautiful Vermont where she walks, hikes, snowshoes well, and golfs badly.