Rogaine

When everything started unraveling at home last summer, I weighed a little over 230 pounds. I lost my appetite and dropped 10 pounds in something like two weeks.

It was weight I needed to shed anyway.

Since my stomach had shrunk a little from eating less, I kept my meals small, and over the next few months lost another 20 pounds.

My weight loss has stabilized, though I eat very little.

I joined a gym with my son Isaac, but haven’t been there but once a week on the average. I want to get fit. I want to lose a little more weight, get back to the 180 pounds I weighed 20 years ago, but it won’t come off unless I get more serious about exercise. I have been holding steady at 200 pounds since October.

There is a part of me that believes my wife may love me more if I am more fit. There is another part of me that would just as soon divorce her, and still lose the weight anyway because it would be healthier for me.

Brenda believes I am suffering from low self esteem.

I suppose she is right.

I don’t feel very good about myself. Or about her either. I don’t feel very good about a lot of things anymore.

I love my kids.

I love God.

I love my job.

I love all of that, yet strangely, I don’t feel joy.

I see beauty in the world, in the universe. I get excited over my growing understanding of astrophysics (did you know that galactic super clusters, perhaps the largest structures in the universe, comprise of billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars?!!!).

Yet seeing beauty, while it stirs something within, hasn’t made me feel the way it used to.

Brenda said something the other day about the small bald spot that is glacially spreading on the back of my head.

I first became aware of it when I saw a photo of myself painting Infant Messiah, Infinite Messiah a couple of Christmases ago.

Infant Messiah, Infinite Messiah

It surprised me. I didn’t know it was there, not having much opportunity to look at the back of my head.

I thought about that little spot of thinning hair. I thought about the weight I have gained over the years. I thought about my wife with another man.

I said something wistful, or mournful, or self-depreciating about that spot on my head and she told me that it didn’t matter to her.

I know she meant that such a superficial thing as that slight spot of thinner hair wasn’t important enough to affect her feelings in a larger sense... but I also thought about how she simply doesn’t seem to feel love for me... not in any way which makes it easier for me to envision a solid future with her in my life.

I didn’t reply to her reassurances.

When I came home yesterday she showed me that she had bought me a three month supply of Rogaine.

I didn’t know what to say.

I don’t feel the need to hastily ward off thinning hair. It doesn’t matter to me. Especially now. There aren’t too many things I feel are all that important beyond caring for my children, seeking wisdom on what to do about my marriage, and nurturing my love for God.

But it was $50! Money we can’t afford. Yet it was also a gesture on her part which says: “I know you are hurting, I know you feel no one loves you, I know you think it is partly because of how you look, and I want you to feel better about yourself. Perhaps this will make you feel a little better.”

So, this morning I followed the instructions on the package and rubbed some of the solution on that thinning spot. I did it again this evening, just as the package prescribes.

It feels stupid.

I suppose there is nothing wrong with men wanting to keep a full head of hair. But there isn’t anything wrong with letting it do whatever it is going to do.

There isn’t anything wrong in wanting to shed a few pounds, to get healthier. But I don’t feel the urge to do so because it will make me more attractive.

Or at least, I don’t think it does.

There are bigger issues than those.

There is the salvation, or dissolution, of my marriage. There is the task of finishing the raising of these two boys.

I was a little ticked at the end of the work day today. I worked extra hard yesterday to get my grades completed so I would be able to leave work early today and take my son to the gym before dinner.

It was 2:20 and I had not only done everything I needed to do to finish up things for the mid term, prepare for the changes in my classes next week, straighten up the TV studio I am building so it is ready for its first productions, and taught myself a little about some new software.

I got an email. It was from the mother of a student. Her student isn’t currently in any of my classes, but I sure don’t want to cross this woman. She writes dozens of emails to our district superintendent, my principal, school board members. She has a history of criticism regarding details in our curriculum, and has even taken her issues to the local paper when she feels she isn’t being heard.

Her email said she was coming over.

I ran to the restroom, hoping to get out of the building before she arrived, but too late.

Even though I told her I was about to leave, she wheedled an hour and twenty minutes of my time out of me, helping her daughter edit some little piece of music for the talent portion of some beauty pageant. She had bought online an instrumental version of “Que Sera, Sera” and needed it cut down to under two minutes.

There was a small hitch in the middle of the song, a 1.5 second blank spot, and the daughter was using one of the lab computers to cut the song down and try to repair the blank spot.

After an hour of trying to be patient, I finally went over and started showing the middle schooler how to take a piece of the Doris Day version with the lyrics, clip a little bit of it, paste it in over the blank spot on the instrumental version, and ramp up and then down the audio on that track so one couldn’’t really hear Ms. Day, so the song regained its continuity. I then clipped the poortion longer two minutes off and softened the cut with a little volume adjustments.

The song’s bald spot was repaired. We burned it onto a CD, and I began locking cabinets, and turning off lights, ostensibly to show I wanted to leave.

The woman clutched my arm, gushed over how sweet I am (I think she was flirting a little), and then launched into questions on whether or not I would be including keyboarding in my curriculum this year.

I practically had to push her out the door.

So, I was irritated by the theft of an hour and twenty minutes of my time. And I didn’t feel like going home. I went to the cemetery, walked and prayed. The song “Que Sera, Sera” looped ironically in my mind as I walked. :What will be, will be... the future’s not ours to see...”

Now it is close to midnight, I have taken a Xanax, but still don’t feel much like sleeping, and I’m tapping at this keyboard beneath this glowing screen in a darkened room.

I have mixed feelings about why I am losing weight. I have mixed feelings about why I am rubbing some strange lotion onto the back of my head. I have mixed feelings about helping some student put together a piece of music for a pageant which emphasizes superficial characteristics.

I threw a patch onto a thin spot on a piece of music with as much passion as I am dripping Rogaine onto the thin spot on the back of my head.

Where the heck am I going with all of this?

I guess I am saying that I wish things were different. I wish I could ponder the incredible beauty of the giant pulses of enormous black holes which make billions of galaxies dance through the universe, to truly grasp the concept that the edges of our universe are receding at 90% of the speed of light from us, to take joy in rainbows and the fresh snow gleaming from Mount Hood. I wish that my prayers were joyful things instead of the questions, and begging for wisdom, and the recounting of my worries. I wish my marriage was healthy, joyful, the way God wants it to be.

I guess I wish that I was losing weight simply because I had the interest in working out, and not simply eating less because I don’t feel like eating.

I don’t care if I grow hair on that thin spot in the back of my hair.

I do care that the joy has thinned so much in my spiritual life that I can’t be more thankful for what He has made and what he has done for me that I actually spend 40 minutes writing a blog post about Rogaine.