Sambucus all the men in my family have beards,except for my older brother. My Dad was referred to as "Captain Birdseye", by most of the kids in the village where they lived in retirement. When my younger bother shaved his off once his wife had a similar reaction to yours, she had never seen him without a beard before. Nowadays said younger bother has more hair on his chin than on his head, and I am afraid he is one of those sad people who still insist in wearing what is left long and in a pony tail (old biker habits die hard). I am sure you are more sophisticated than that :-)

The greatest part of wisdom is learning to develop  the ineffable genius of extracting the "neither here nor there" out of any situation...."