Thinning Out

The old Chinese woman across the stream is bald.

I’m “old” now, too.  In my 70s, I’m at that age – past that age – of people I would label “old” when I was young.

So, when I say she’s an old Chinese woman, I mean, compared to little old me, she’s recognizably older. Mid to late 80s is my guess.

When she, her daughter, and her son-in-law moved into that house across the stream, her having no hair was one of the first things I noticed.  I’ve known elderly women who were losing their hair.  Thinning out.  The kind of balding where women’s Rogaine might be a go-to choice.  Still salvageable.

This isn’t that kind of balding. There is not one single hair on her head.  My first thought was that she might have cancer.  But after six months or so had gone by, I’d changed my mind about that.  I mean, she could have been in remission, but this little old lady was spry.

I’d see her puttering around the garden weeding, pruning trees, trimming hedges, tending her vegetable garden.  She wouldn’t wear a hat, either.  In the beating sun, she’d be out there, her head gleaming with perspiration, moving around like a much younger person.

I hoped she was using sunscreen.  I’ve known a few people who’ve died from skin cancer.  One of them, a favorite high school teacher, had it.  He was nearly bald, a pale haole man.  Quite old relative to us teenagers.

One day he shared his diagnosis with us.  This frank admission scared me. His head had some raging red patches, and as the school year went on, he began wearing a broad-brimmed white hat.  Eventually, he wouldn’t even take it off in the classroom.

When a substitute teacher came in one day, she said that he’d be out indefinitely.  It turned out to be permanent.  I never saw him again.

Another man, my father’s friend, developed skin cancer.  He was a surveyor with the City & County, one of those folks you see out on the road making measurements of ground-level points, checking the pace of O‘ahu sinking into the ocean.

After the diagnosis, each time I’d see him, I’d notice that sections of skin on his head became small depressions.  Gradually, as the doctor carved out more and more of his face, he became more and more skeletal.  Near the end, most of the flesh on one side of his face was gone.  They’d nearly, it appeared, hit bone in some areas.  He became a skeleton right before our eyes. 

Back in the heavy beach days of my youth, we’d begun to hear about sun tan lotion.  I’d seen ads for Sea & Ski, the dog pulling down the girl’s bikini bottom, and here in Hawai‘i, Hawaiian Tropic in those bronze bottles snuck onto the shelves at Longs beside the green and orange tubes of Sea & Ski.

My mom, an avid swimmer, tried both.  She hated the white cream coating glaze of Ski & Ski, and she said wearing the Hawaiian Tropic oil made her feel like a turkey being basted in the oven.

Toward the end, she would go frequently to her dermatologist, the pre-cancerous spots appearing quickly all over her body.  The smaller ones were burned off. The more dangerous ones were sliced out with a scalpel.  Sometimes she needed a stitch or two.

Most of us, my friends and I, grew up with nothing but those patches of skin we would peel off after the most recent severe burn.  My dermatologist now tells me my case is past worrying about SPFs.  My concern, he says, should be to practice sun-avoidance.  Forget worrying about sunscreen.  Just stay out of the sun altogether.

Mine spots are all in the more minor category.  Knock on wood. Every three months, he burns off all the ones he can find all over my body.  No scalpel so far.

I’ve not been to the beach in years, and I do all my yardwork either in the early morning or when the sun has sunk below the hill, my yard hidden from any direct rays.

When I watch the bald woman work in her yard, I’m guessing she must be wise enough to be using a high SPF sunscreen.  Although at her age, she may have just said screw it, I’ve lived long enough.

After the first year, I decided if she was in remission, or luckily had beaten it altogether, her hair would have grown back.  She was just plain bald.  It had to be an age thing.

Unless, of course, she was making some kind of style statement.  The way so many men, and some women, choose to shave their heads now days.  With guys, it’s more and more shaved heads accompanied by more and more beards.  A trendy shift of focal hair areas.

So many bald men with beards.  Beards from short and neatly trimmed to long and scraggly.  Regardless of the beard style, it has to be that someone must be telling these men that they look good bald and bearded.  Gotta be their mothers.

I’ve never actually talked to the old Chinese lady.  You can’t just outright ask people, strangers or friends, if they’re in some stage of dealing with cancer.  And I’m not so much of a skilled conversationalist that I could masterfully steer a casual conversation toward broaching the subject.

The way of the world with neighbors, I’ve never talked to her daughter or her son-in-law. So I wouldn’t be able to ask them. The stream is a major divider.  It’s not like I could just lean on the fence and chat anyway.

At night, when I’m having a beer out on my lānai, I can see a bit through the windows running along the stream side of their house.  The one with the easiest view inside is of the old woman.

Almost every night, she sits in a chair, her back to the window, knitting.  Embroidering.  Some kind of sewing is what I can figure out. Not spinning wheel or weaving loom obvious big stuff, but the motions are unmistakable.

While she macramés or whatever, she watches TV.  The color flickers.  She sits beneath a lamp, a signal light shining off her head like a warning beacon.  A bald old Chinese woman lighthouse.

A few weeks ago, I was in New York City. One day I was running late to make it to a play, so instead of walking — my transportation mode of choice when I travel — I jumped on a bus headed uptown. It was rush hour so the bus was jammed. I had to stand. A young man, 20-something, stood up, said, “Sir,” and gestured to the seat.

He seemed to be looking in my direction. Sometimes I forget about the color of my hair and that I don’t look as young as used to. I did a double-take, looking over both my shoulders, then back at him. He was speaking to me. He didn’t say “uncle”; I wasn’t in Hawai‘i. Sir. What a polite young gentleman. I took the seat and thanked him.

What amazing energy for such an old person.  That bald Chinese woman. Who knows how long any of us will be here?  It’ll be luck that I’m as youthful as she is if I make it to that age.