Gray Hair

     It is ironic to me that after years of having a highly stressful, fast paced job, that it would be now, while I’m “living a life of luxury” as a Stay At Home Mom, that I start to get gray hair.

Figures.

     It’s funny, I thought I would be more upset to find gray hair in the sea of my dishwater blond head, but I wasn’t.   

     I have been told by friends, who know my family well, that the reason I don’t really dread going gray is because the women in my family do it so beautifully. As my mother and aunts’ have aged, their hair has turned a beautiful shade of white. There is no other way to describe it, there is no gray that’s noticeable, but still hints of the red or blond that it was originally. It is, physically, a very beautiful look.

     But, the truth is, the color my hair turns isn’t what really matters to me. If I get this beautiful color that runs in my genetics, or something else entirely, I still don’t feel like it will bother me because it’s not their physical appearance that I remember from growing up that influenced me. It is how well my mom and her sisters wore their hair. It was their attitude about it, and aging altogether. I never once heard any of them comment on their hair in a negative way. I know they did not always look like this picture. I’m sure there was the occasional bad hair day, and more than once, a functional hat won over fashion in those cold New England winters. However, overall there was never a lamenting of getting older and there was never dread of change. Now, they may have struggled with insecurities of their own and just decided that they were not going to vocalize them for the sake of myself and my cousins, and for that, I applaud them. But I really think it was more than that, I think they expected that their bodies would age and change, and they didn’t fight it.

     Because like much of life, if not all, it’s not what happens to us that matters, but it is how we respond to what happens. That is what changes us and changes those around us whom we influence. I know that sounds like a very grand and dramatic statement when you think about the fact we’re just talking about the twelve gray hairs I found on my temple last week. But in today’s world where everyone’s striving to physically appear 22, and women as young as 30 (see, 30 is still young), are getting their hair professionally dyed to hide the changing tones of their physical appearance makes me sad.  What are we teaching our daughters? What standards are we inadvertently setting for them?  What are we silently telling our sons about physical beauty??   

     Well that stopped me in my tracks, because I know I am not setting the same example that my mother and her sisters did. True, the gray doesn’t bother me, but there are many things about my aging that do.

     And to be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure how to change the example I set in my home, and I don’t know that I can change the world we live in.

 But I am going to try, you just watch me.