A shock of gray

Just this last weekend, I saw it. Unbelievable!

A gray hair.

It came as a shock to me. It is too early for this. I am not ready for it.

But there it was, just sitting there on top of the other hair, glinting in the sun. Mocking me. Daring me to pull it out.

I resisted the temptation. Nothing good could come of that.

Gray hair is not unusual in our family. My uncle, in his mid-seventies, has a full head of silvery gray hair. My father’s hair grayed in the last several years of his life. His too was that sparkling, silver gray.

But my mother, in her eighties, is still mostly free of gray. She and her mother before her kept their dark black hair without benefit of any commercial coloring. Most of her friends have a hard time believing that.

Husband’s ever-receding fringe of hair is now mostly gray. His beard also has become more gray than brown in recent years. His maternal aunt’s youthful red hair has been gray the entire thirty-five years that I have known her.  His father, too  had a gray fringe over the years that I knew him.

But this is too early. Not yet!

Is prematurely gray hair becoming for a woman? Somehow I doubt it. The natural look may work for some, and the silvery gray can be quite stunning, I realize. But it takes a brave woman to take that route. There would likely be a long time of “salt and pepper” to get to that point.

The realization that I am at this stage of my life has hit me hard. Of course, I should have known that this time would come. It may come as a surprise, but I never considered this possibility.  It is something that was not included in any of the articles on aging that I have read. None of my friends have talked about this issue. I haven’t seen it discussed  on any talk shows. Not even a sit-com has included this subject in a story line.

Not from this point of view.

This gray hair was on my 28-year-old daughter’s head.

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