the follicle complex

Baby G’s hair is coming in just as mine is leaving.

I first noticed it in a Gap dressing room the week G’s strands began sprouting. Initially, I blamed the lighting. But after rotating my head this way and that for nearly ten minutes, I couldn’t deny it: the curls were retreating from my crown. The mirrors were telling me what my friends had chosen not to (unless maybe that’s what they meant when they said G looked like me). I let out a muted cry. The clerk who’d led me to the room with my two hangered shirts asked if everything was ok.

“No,” I called out over the door. “I’m aging.”

And thus began my grieving period. Throughout my life, my hair had been a reliable asset. Never easily contained, mind you, but disheveled seemed to trump hairless, at least among the middle-aged women on Tinder. My curls had surely diverted attention from my deepening wrinkles and personality quirks. I’d had a good run of it.

Then, during a midnight feeding, an epiphany: G and I were sharing a once in a lifetime moment–like the transit of Venus across the sun–as his burgeoning follicles mirrored my decaying ones. When again would our scalps look so similar? The selfie of the back of our heads may have taken twenty minutes, but was so worth it.

I have since come to accept the inevitable. After all, every dad I know has thinning hair. It obviously goes with the territory, along with backaches, increased appetite for mindless TV, and frequent urination.

During G’s baby naming, my dad, (with his own sparse assemblage of grey wisps), officially passed along to Baby G his childhood tallit (prayer shawl). Similarly, it appears that only one of us at a time can possess a full head of hair. Now G gets to carry the baton for a while. Use it well, my son.

Which brings me to my current dilemma: G needs a haircut. I’ve been hearing it for weeks from various aunties as they push errant wisps from his eyes. And people are beginning to ask me how old “she” is. “It’s a boy actually,” I say. To which they react with looks of horror and profuse apology, as if they’d mistaken my baby for a muskrat. Gender confusion, I’ve learned, is a huge offense in baby circles.

Yet I can’t quite bring myself to sit G in the barber’s chair. Perhaps I’m just curious what his hair will look like without intervention. Each day, he’s a new kid, with new movements and sounds and ways to wear enchilada. Why not let his mane, our family heirloom, manifest its full potential?

Or…maybe I’m living vicariously. The mom who buys her teen daughter the strappy Manolo Blahniks she’d wear were it not for the bunions.

Whatever the case, damn if I’m going to crop G’s mop prematurely.