Thursday, September 02, 2010
Gray
My mom started going gray at 21. I don’t mean “got her first gray hair” - she literally started “going gray” - gray started becoming the predominant color when she was around 21. She immediately started dying her hair on a regular basis. She dyed her hair regularly until long after I had moved out. I think when I was about 27 she decided to try “letting it go”. Her friend had sexy silver locks and my mom thought that maybe she too could get away with it. Thing is, my mom just aged before her time. Between smoking and drinking and not exercising and not eating right and not seeing a doctor regularly and mostly just treating her body like crap, her body was easily 20+ years older than she actually was so the gray didn’t look “sexy” - it just made her look old and haggard.
I don’t say this to be unkind. It just… was. Someone actually made the snark to her that she was trying to be like her friend and that it wasn’t working for her. It hurt her deeply - I think because she knew the truth. I don’t remember if she stubbornly decided to stick with gray or if she decided to start dying again, but I do know that toward the end of her life she WAS gray. And old. Very old. With gray skin and gray hair and skin sagging on her face. (Mind you, my mom never made it to her 55th birthday. She shouldn’t have been that old.)
So I’ve “had” gray hairs for awhile. I started dying long before any popped up - entirely to experiment with color and give my mother a heart attack when I went bright red just before high school graduation. So when I started seeing a gray or two, I didn’t panic, it covered well, and really no one noticed. Well. Almost no one.
When my grandfather passed, a childhood friend came to the services. After all, my grandpa was his grandpa, too, in actuality if not by genetics. Grandpa was everyone’s grandpa. My friend hadn’t seen me in years and frankly, between the stress of my grandfather’s illness (and then death), three kids, traveling back to Colorado (and staying for a month) I hadn’t bothered to dye my hair in awhile. It wasn’t BAD but he did exclaim during one of our conversations, “You’ve got gray hair!” He was shocked, surprised, and… disappointed? I think disappointed because he had me frozen in his mind as a twelve-year-old girl, and I no longer was frozen in perfection at a time when we both were at our best.
Today I caught TDO giving me a weird look as he dropped off money to pay for one of Devon’s Scout outings. He gives me weird looks these days - not unusual. But this one distressed me as it had a deep look of disappointment, much the same as the one my childhood friend had. “What?” I asked nervously.
“Nothing,” he said, startled that I’d caught him gawking. “You just. You just had a really blond strand of hair. I wasn’t expecting it.”
At the beginning of summer, I had blond highlights put in to help “blend” some of the gray. It wasn’t the best color job I’ve had, but most definitely not the worst. There are a few strands of blond in the front that have been lightened even more by my time in the sun, so they do stand out when my hair is parted just right or falls in my face just so, so I just shrugged it off.
Tonight, I looked in the mirror, though. I mean… really looked. I had a thought when I was driving Devon to an OA meeting ... “this is the youngest I’ll ever be,” and so when I got home and the house had settled for the night, I wanted to stare in the mirror. Vanity demanded it. I wanted to see myself as I was on this very day - the youngest that I will ever again be. My hair had parted weird - probably similarly to what TDO had seen earlier in the day. I was shocked. I don’t have a few grays, or some grays. I’m “going gray.” All along the entire part where my highlights have grown out, the hair is a shiny gray. (Why couldn’t I be lucky enough to land white or silver??) Further inspection lead to discovery that there were several places on my tired old head where the roots were entirely gray.
Um. Wow.
I’m not really sure what to do with that information. I mean, I guess I made it sixteen years longer than my mom did. So, doing some really dirty (and lame, I realize it doesn’t make much sense) math, my mom started going gray at 21 and lived to be 54. I’m “going gray” at almost 37 and thus should live to be, what? 70? Which means I’m more than halfway done with my life. (OK barely, but still.)
Not quite sure what I’m doing with all that, but it’s tossing around in my head.
Gray thoughts to mull around my gray head.
Posted under:
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