My First Grey
I remember a time when my brother-in-law spotted my sister’s first grey hair. He pointed out the silver strand, she claimed it was the sun reflecting off her hair, and he yanked it from her head to prove her otherwise. Sure enough, in between my brother in law’s fingers was a thick, wiry hair. My sister gasped upon the discovery while me and her husband laughed uncontrollably and called her names like old woman and grandma.
What I didn’t think of at the time, was how this horrifying event would eventually happen to me. It doesn’t help that it also happened just two weeks after my twenty-third birthday, which for some reason was a particularly hard birthday for me – my first hard birthday, actually.
Luckily, I made the discovery in private. I had the afternoon off and decided to try dying my hair by myself for the first time. As I was on the phone with my boyfriend telling him about the new colour I picked out, I started looking at my roots in the mirror. I parted my hair on the side of my head and was trying to imagine the new reddish hue I was about to have. And that’s when I spotted it.
I squinted my eyes, trying to adjust to what I saw and telling myself that it could not be what I thought it was. I tuned out from my boyfriends conversation as I put my head closer to the mirror and fingered through my hair to try and find what I thought was a grey. Mid-way through my boyfriend’s story, I gasped. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked concerned. “Are you okay?” I went silent. “Babe, are you there?”
“Ya,” I respond. “I’m here.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t think I want to tell you,” I say. But realizing that he’s only going to keep asking anyway, I confide. “I think I found a grey hair.”
He started laughing. “Are you serious? Who cares? I’ve had a grey before.”
His casual attitude about it made me feel better, briefly. I got off the phone with him, and went on a mission to try to pull this little guy out. Once I finally got it, I studied the hair and sure enough, the top quarter-inch, just where my roots were, was a white tipped strand, like it was dipped in White-Out. I didn’t know what to do. I immediately felt old and admittedly, my eyes welled up a little bit; although, I did not allow a single tear to form. I also felt a bit like a substance abuser, living in denial that the hair was true, even though I could clearly see it in my fingers. There was also a series of realizations that came with the discovery; ie. dying my hair was no longer just for fun; it was a necessity. And with this came the realization that I’m going to have to start doing other things to mask my age, like use anti-wrinkle cream. And upon this comes memories of me making fun of my parents but now realizing how I have fallen into the trap of adulthood that I vowed never allow myself into – like morning coffees, checking up on my daily news, and playing Jeopardy against my boyfriend on a nightly basis.
Strangely enough however, is that after all this I felt a strange sense of pride. Rather than throwing away or burning the evidence, I wanted to hold on to the memory of it (God knows how well my memory is going to be years down the road). And I told myself that it is a sign of wisdom (frightening since I remember hearing my grandparents say this same thing). Either way, I’m telling myself that a grey is nothing to go grey over… and I say this out of fear that if I do stress, more will come.
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