My Husband, My Beard

The good thing about growing old is that you finally believe you can do whatever you damn well please. The bad thing? The resulting pain is simply the weight of time on your body, not a social repercussion.

And then there are those lucky few---the few that are timeless. Such as my husband.

I'm not offering this as an endearment. It's simply a fact based on fifteen years of careful observation. And discussion. Yes, we discuss his 'condition' not because we're vain or conniving but are amused by the mystery of it all.

We have decided this aura is based on his small stature. A short man can either fight his supposed shortcomings or revel in the fact that a major social expectation has been removed. The perception of power is shifted, causing strangers to relax into chatty, even forward behavior. Women find him an endearing equal, which may have its own sex appeal. Men, safe in there looming size, make the pretense to treat him as an equal, or gush over his mustache.

Yes, his handlebar mustache is definitely part of his petit mystique.

"You're so cute---you're so cute!" a woman cried out at the local Dairy Queen a few years ago. "You look like the Monopoly Man! You should go to McDonald's and see if they’ll give you a free Happy Meal!"

I was sure she'd wet her pants.

She was with her teenage daughter, and her distraction over my husband went on sporadically as we indulged in our two for one Blizzards. He happened to be away from our table when she came out of the restroom and repeated her mantra to me up close and personal, and I just smiled back at her. When she got to her table, she turned back to ask:

"Is he your dad?"

"Nope," I replied---not quite looking at her in the eye.

I heard her daughter swat her and tsk mommmm. She seemed more embarrassed by her mother's stupidity than her impropriety.

In writing this I've realized that I haven't been asked since if my husband is my father---which means I'm aging in the public eye while he remains the same. The question used to annoy me since we're so physically opposite, but now my ego might welcome it. No one believes he's almost seventy, while I must look very much forty-something.

If age has changed my husband at all, it's expressed in his increasingly matter-of-fact attitude. Recently he was being chatted up by an older woman while in line at another Dairy Queen inside a truck stop. She was momentarily distracted but still noticed when the first Blizzard was handed over to him, so when she turned back and noticed the Blizzard missing, she was shocked.

"Where did it go?!"

"Oh, I handed it over to my husband."

The trucker in front of her spun around as if my husband said he just handed it to a supermodel or a martian, but I was already safely away in the twelve volt appliance aisle.  There was nothing for them to do but duly note his truth and continue waiting for their order.

In case you haven't noticed, the evolution in facial hair continues.  There were goatees, and some men just can't leave behind what Mother called muff mouths.  Beards are still hot, but mustaches are cutting edge.  My husband has overheard the teenage boys in the coffee house murmur that's the mustache I want.  Another, hardly any older, recently flagged us to stop for a construction zone on the Feather River Highway.  He peered through the glare on our windshield which could not hide the white mustache inside.  He gestured grandly over his bare upper lip and gave the okay sign---and then hocked a big loogie.  Eventually he let us on through, but he had to lean towards my open window to voice his approval.

"That's one hell of a mustache, brother."

 I smiled wanly as he grinned beyond me, knowing I was quite invisible.  Brother?  You mean Grandpa!