UNRECOGNIZABLE

I decided to shave my head. Then I shaved my beard.

It wasn’t a midlife crisis. Although, given everything else happening in my life, I suppose I could have added one to the list.

I wasn’t trying to look younger, or more handsome. At fifty- something, I had already made peace with a few things. I have a large head and not much of a chin. Hair had been doing a lot of heavy lifting.

I was trying to become someone nobody recognized. That is a strange thing to admit. A hard one, too. For most of my professional life, I wanted people to know who I was. I made a point of being known. 

My photograph appeared in newspapers. People recognized me in restaurants and grocery stores. Sometimes Erin would give me a look that said, Okay, that’s enough. My ego never quite got the message.

A few years removed, I can say it plainly: I wanted to be recognized for many of the wrong reasons.

Then, overnight, being recognized became the thing I dreaded most.

Did that person know what happened?

Were they staring?

Were they talking about me?

Or was I imagining the whole thing?

I couldn’t control what people thought about me. But standing in the bathroom with a pair of clippers, I could control what they

saw.

I held my breath and ran a stripe straight down the middle of my head.

Now I was committed.

Then the sides. I looked like a Gremlin that had lost a fight with a lawn mower.For reasons I still can’t explain, I trimmed the beard down to just

a mustache first. 

That turned a pretty pathetic moment into a genuinely funny one. I looked like a man who sold used cars in 1983 and had strong opinions about it.

Then I set the clippers to a one and took everything off.

I hadn’t seen my whole face in more than ten years. The last time I’d shaved my head was on a family trip to Ireland in the mid- 1990s, thirty years younger and twenty pounds lighter.

My family was not a fan. Erin really didn’t like it. The kids couldn’t stop rubbing my head because it felt like peach fuzz.

But for some reason, I was glad I did it. It felt like a cleansing.

Then I looked in the mirror.

A middle-aged man looked back at me. His eyes were tired and heavy from no sleep, from anxiety, from sadness.

I wanted strangers not to recognize me.

39I hadn’t expected that I wouldn’t recognize him either.

My first time out in public was my two youngest daughters’ dance recital. The big one. The place was packed.

I saw people I had known for years, from just about every chapter of my life.

I saw them. They saw me.

Nothing happened.

No double take. No whisper. 

Nobody said a word.

It was as if I looked exactly the way I always had.

Maybe they didn’t care, which was most certainly true. Or maybe they knew exactly who I was and couldn’t find the courage to say anything to a man who looked like that.

Either way, I sat there and watched my girls dance.

I had shaved my head to disappear. It turned out I didn’t need to. And disappearing didn’t help.

Changing what people see doesn’t change what you carry.

The hair grew back. So did the beard.

This time, I’m keeping both.