The first time Harold did my hair, he nearly set the bathroom on fire.

It was a Sunday morning—brighter than usual, the kind of sunlight that makes the dust motes dance—and I was sitting on my vanity stool in that old pink robe with the frayed sleeves, the one he always says makes me look like a flamingo that survived the sixties. My hands had been useless for weeks by then. Not totally lifeless, but enough that I couldn’t twist the curlers like I used to. I remember trying to pick one up and feeling it slip through my fingers like a ghost.

“Need a hand, sweetheart?” he’d said, already stepping in with a grin that told me he was halfway to making a mess.

I was nervous. Not just because Harold hadn’t touched a curling iron since Reagan was president, but because doing my hair had always been my thing. I didn’t need much. I wasn’t one for flashy makeup or fancy clothes. But my curls? That was where I still felt like myself. Like I could walk into a room and be seen.

Still, I let him. I watched as he lined up my curlers like little soldiers on the counter, misted my hair with the spray bottle, and started twirling strands with a concentration usually reserved for bomb defusal. He hummed as he worked, something jazzy and off-key, and when he accidentally wrapped one curl backward and got the plastic stuck in my earring, we laughed until I had tears in my eyes.

“Windswept chic,” he declared proudly, stepping back to admire his handiwork.

That became our thing. Every morning, like clockwork. Even on the days when my hands ached more than usual or when his back cracked as he bent over to pick up a comb, we kept at it. He started improving, too. He found tutorials online, printed them out in giant font, and taped them to the bathroom mirror. “For reference,” he said, holding up one that looked like it belonged in a hair academy textbook.

I loved him more for it.

Then came that morning, not too long ago, when I noticed it.

We were taking our usual mirror selfie—something we started a few years back to make our kids laugh and somehow never stopped. I lifted the phone and caught our reflection. But this time, I didn’t see my curls. I saw Harold.

His eyes looked a little more tired, the skin around them thinner. His shirt hung looser around the collarbone. And his hands, usually so steady with the brush, had trembled just slightly when he reached for the mousse. He’d asked twice where I kept it, even though it’d been on the same shelf since the Clinton administration.

I smiled anyway. Snapped the photo. Kissed his cheek. But when he stepped out to get the paper, I went into the bedroom and opened his top drawer.

That’s when I found the bottle.

It wasn’t one of his prescriptions. The label had someone else’s name on it—someone I didn’t recognize. The pills inside were strong, too. I knew enough to tell that much. Painkillers. The kind doctors don’t hand out lightly.

My stomach twisted. I sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the bottle in my hand, trying to understand.

When he came back inside, I didn’t confront him right away. I couldn’t. Harold wasn’t the kind of man who hid things from me. At least, he never used to be.

So I waited until that evening. We were sitting on the couch, the two of us wrapped up in our blanket, half-watching a documentary and half-dozing, when I reached for his hand and quietly asked, “How long have your hands been hurting?”

He didn’t lie. That’s the thing about Harold. He doesn’t lie, not even when it’d be easier.

“A few months,” he said, eyes still on the screen. “It’s just arthritis. Doctor says it comes with the territory.”

I squeezed his fingers. “And the pills?”

That’s when he finally looked at me.

He sighed, leaned back, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Frank gave them to me. You remember Frank from the hardware store? He’s been on them for years, says they’re the only thing that helps him sleep. I didn’t want to… I didn’t want to stop doing your hair. I figured, if I just took them in the mornings, I could get through it without making a mess of things.”

I felt something break a little inside me. Not from anger. From the sheer tenderness of it. He’d been hurting—quietly, privately—just to keep a piece of our routine alive. Just so I could feel beautiful. Just so I wouldn’t have to give up one more thing.

But those pills? They weren’t helping. They were hurting him. That much was obvious now.

The next day, we went to the doctor together. We brought the bottle with us. The look on Dr. Nguyen’s face said it all before she even spoke. The meds were interfering with some of Harold’s heart medication, throwing his body out of balance and draining him of energy.

It wasn’t irreversible, thank God. But it had taken a toll.

There was a long talk, some blood work, a few scared moments in a sterile hallway while we waited for results. Then came the new plan. New meds. More manageable routines. And a stern warning from Dr. Nguyen that “borrowing” prescriptions, even for love, was a dangerous gamble.

After that, things shifted.

We scaled back our morning routine. Some days I’d go to the salon down the street. Other days, we’d just sit together in the kitchen, sipping tea while my hair stayed straight and simple. I even learned to like it that way. Turns out, straight hair suits me too. Who knew?

But every now and then—on Sundays especially—Harold will still pull out the curlers. He insists. “Just for fun,” he says. And we’ll laugh when he messes up a strand or forgets which direction to twist, but we’ll do it anyway. Because it’s not about perfection. It never was.

It’s about him humming while he works, about the way he grins when I check myself in the mirror, about the way he says, “You look just like you did in 1964.”

And I don’t. I really don’t.

But in his eyes, I might as well be twenty-five again.

That’s the kind of love I wish I could bottle and pass on to our grandchildren someday. Not the grand gestures or the Instagram-perfect moments. But the little things—the curlers, the robe, the off-key humming. The things that say, I see you. I still choose you. Even when it hurts.

If you’ve got someone like that—someone who shows up for you in quiet, stubborn, beautiful ways—hold onto them. And let them hold onto you too.

Because in the end, love isn’t about who does your hair. It’s about who learns how, just so you don’t have to stop feeling like yourself.

And if you think that’s worth sharing—go ahead and tap that heart, maybe even pass it along. Someone out there needs to be reminded that tenderness like this still exists.