all that glimmers is gold.

i was sitting outside of barnes&noble waiting on my parents when something shiny caught my eye. as i tried to figure out what it was a million things went through my mind..
what is that?
a penny?
a diamond?
tin foil?
that's annoying..

i leaned forward a little and tried to locate the source of the glimmer.
i found it on the head of an old man sitting next to his wife.

i stared at his balding and white hair as the sun shined on it.
my usual cynical and stone heart melted a little. and i felt home.
[disclaimer: be prepared for sappiness.]

i saw my husband in the future. with a balding head peeking through his white hair.
and i felt so much love for him at that moment.
i felt what it was like to love someone for that long, that you want to tear up when you look at the way the sun light shines on their hair.
and you reminisce about when there was more of it.
and it was a different color.
a color that doesn't show age or experience.
and you loved the way it blew around when you were young and careless in the convertible you bought to take a road trip across the country.

you look at his hair, which has lost all pigment, and think about how you will never stop running your fingers through it.
how your daughters once tried to curl it.
how you have cut it so many late nights in the kitchen after the kids have gone to bed.
how he still has that cowlick he had as a child.
how nothing has changed and, yet, how everything has changed.

i watched as he lifted his hands to his head to slick what little hair he had back and then brought them back down to rest on his wife's lap. they just sat in silence, as all the years they had between them sang out at that moment.

i don't know who my future husband is.
he's nothing but a blurry photograph in my mind.
truth be told, he's the last on my priority list right now.
but i know soon enough, his need for a hair cut in the kitchen will be high atop that list.