Graybeard

In which our Hero noodles an eagle

There’s a chinese mall near my house, which frequently means that we have to make stops to pick up items on the way to visiting family. Today, the item was hair colouring, which is not a secret but still caused my dad to tease his little brother a fair bit. Of course, with the faux-black, my uncle looks young. Younger than my dad whose salt-and-pepper has given way to a more iron-grey sheen. Younger than their baby sister with long grey threads in raven hair.

And younger than me, with my frosted sideburns and the scattered white in the once-was-black of my week-old stubbly protobeard. But oddly it’s that beard that makes me realize that it’s time to write, now. Tomorrow I will shave, and it occurs to me that there’s enough symbolism to it that I might want to look back and not have a monthlong hole in my outboard memory. So here I am, Gentle Reader, gently taking up my pen. Keyboard. Whatever.

I’m exhausted. It’s my hope that my glasses obscure the condition a little, but I’ve got dark circles around my eyes. I try to remind myself that I’m not in my twenties any more but circumstances are what they are and I fight, I fight, so hard.

I’m exhausted. It’s been a difficult summer. Nothing actually bad, but intellectually and emotionally wearing. Work is… work continues. Home is… well, I don’t know how I did it, but I got all ahead of myself in terms of expectations so when a plan fell apart, I was just crushed, even though intellectually I know that any other time I would have been (and have been) the one to point it it was vanishingly improbable. Fool, me.

And I’m sorry. I have not been a good diarist of late. Not noting much, not reading consistently. Not posting. I have not had words.

Today, I’m standing by the good grace of acetaminophen and will, though I suspect it’s mostly the painkillers.

Tomorrow, though, I will shave. And face the barbarians as a good son of Rome.