Beardless husband

My husband shaved off his beard yesterday. He says he was tired of it and complained about ingrown hairs, and he apologized to me, believing that I loved it. I didn't mind it. I have nothing against beards. But I've decided he looks better without it. He kept the mustache, which I do love, despite my wondering what his upper lip might look like. We had a little fun with the hair removal process, taking him down to a Van Dyke first. I took pictures, but I'm not so sure he wants those pictures shown to anyone. With the Van Dyke, he looked vaguely sinister.

Anyway, he now looks the way he did for most of our 36+ year marriage, but I still catch myself staring at him. Somehow his resemblance to his brothers strengthened. It was always strong, but the beard made him look quite a bit different. Now he looks like a thinner version of both his older and younger brother. Thinner face and thinner hair. The general overall resemblance is there, especially around the cheeks and chin.

As we age, we tend to look more like our siblings, it seems. My late father-in-law and his brother certainly were look-alikes, and my mother-in-law has many sisters who all seem to have the same face shape, hair type, and body type. My father and his older brother were alike even down to the sounds of their voices. My two sons have similar sounding voices. My mother's family has a distinctive nose structure that virtually all the kids had, probably because both their parents had similar noses. (I wonder why. They weren't at all related.) It's a slender, thin, pointy nose that my mother called a "beak."

My sisters and I look a bit alike, but because my health is better, and I have all my teeth, I don't look as "rode hard and put up wet" as they do. We all have short hair and square faces, though. And our noses are similar. (We five kids got Daddy's rounder nose, not Mama's beak.)

Genetics. What a trip. I wish I understood better how it all worked. S.