I don’t mind the missed trip though, even if it is probably (maybe) the last trip dad will have to the beach. Needed a quiet weekend at home and the thought of being surrounded by nonstop action and talking would have been overwhelming.
Dad left Friday with hair starting to fall out from the radiation treatments. Thankfully that was his last day of the treatments and he won’t have to do them anymore. Went straight into hospice when they got back. He got out of the car and for the first time in my life saw him with the typical male pattern baldness. The man has always had the most beautiful thick dark hair, didn’t even start to go seriously white/gray until a year ago when cancer treatments began.
Mom asked if I’d shave his head for him so I grabbed their buzzer and asked how he wanted it. Just a trim, he wanted to keep what he could. So I trimmed the sides and shaved the top so it could regrow evenly. Touched up around his ears, shaved his neck and shaped his beard, brought it to a consistent length then faded the sides.
While doing his hair we sat on the deck so his hair would take to the winds and become parts of nests for the birds. I imagined some of it getting caught in spiderwebs and silvering the soil as it disintegrated.
I could tell when he dropped into the space that feeds the ASMR side of me. Where only a specific part of my left thigh bristles in goosebumps and my scalp gets deliciously tingly. I knew what he was experiencing because I get the same way with certain sounds, different ranges of bliss in being groomed. He melted into my hands as I turned his head this way and that and tilted his chin to trim his neck. His big sighs made something in my chest loosen up, I hadn’t realized I was holding it so tight.
When done I wiped his noggin down and he shuffled in to the mirror to take a look. I was in the kitchen with my sis and mom and heard a very loud guffaw coming from down the hall. I trotted over to see what he thought and he said he had never imagined what he’d look like when he was balding, I imagine it was because he’d never experienced it personally. His dad died with a full head of hair after all, none of us imagined what he’d look like with male pattern baldness. I still do a double take when I see him after the trim, maybe he will have time to grow some back so he doesn’t have to go without his hair.
A Burd in Flight 