I Am A Gray American

I remember exactly when I found my first gray hair. Actually, my roommate found it for me. I was twenty-five, and we shared an apartment that spanned the warped second floor of a pre-Victorian house near Boston College. I was coming out of my bedroom as she was coming out of hers, and she looked at me, and grinned. Brooklyn born and bred through and through, she said, pointing at my temple, "There's a gray one. And it's really shiny, too."

Trying to seem non-chalant, I shrugged. Then, when she plopped herself on the couch to watch television, I high-tailed it to the bathroom mirror.

I shouldn't have been surprised. My mother went gray early - she found her first at twenty-one, which I was more than happy to point out coincided with the birth of my older brother. I beat her by four years, but it didn't seem possible for me to be going gray. I felt...so young. When my mother was twenty-five, she had a husband and a house and a mortgage and a car and three children. I had...well, none of that. I even worked for myself, and was doing well enough at it so I only had to work three weeks out of the month.

It just didn't seem fair.

When the grays started asserting themselves into my otherwise lovely auburn locks, I went into deep denial. I covered them with cellophanes, a temporary process that, while it stained my scalp for a few shampoos, did the trick. When I reached the magic percentage of gray that cellophanes would no longer mask, my stylist laid out the awful truth: I had to go permanent.

I didn't like the process. It made my scalp sting and smelled horrific. But the results were...well, damn. I was one hot, twenty-five-looking mama, if I did say so myself.

This went on for years, changing my shade for the season (darker for winter, lighter for summer), until the late nineties or so, when news articles began to appear linking permanent hair dyes with cancer.

I stopped for a time, cut it short so I'd avoid the dreaded two-toned look, then grew it long again.

Then I got tired of being called "ma'am." I was also approaching my fortieth birthday and had made a bargain with myself: I would not hit that dreaded age looking like a "ma'am." I'd lose the twenty-odd pounds I'd let accumulate on my bod, and I'd absolutely nix the gray. (by that time hair dyes had been exonerated and the food-and-cosmetic police moved on to something else)

My stylist was pleased. Husband was pleased. But I looked in the mirror the next morning and nearly cried. It looked so...fake. I'd gotten so used to the "real" me that now I looked like I was sporting a wig.

But I got used to it.

I've been (more or less) keeping up with the "process" ever since.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

The dreaded roots had been growing in (because of various problems I'd had to cancel my regular appointment several times) and they were at least an inch long.

And they were kind of growing on me. I liked the shine of them. I liked the softness of them as I touched the new hair growing in at my part.

And I started thinking: what law says I have to look like I'm twenty-five? Why can't I age gracefully? Husband had gray hair coming in. Nearly every guy around my age I know is going gray. Many of the women, too.

Why not me?

I floated the trial balloon at Husband, and he had no reaction.

So as we drove to the stylist, I told him again (just in case he'd not been paying full attention the last time).

He turned to look at me. "You're really going to not dye your hair? You'll look like some kind of redneck!"

Rednecks of the world, I apologize on his behalf.

But I wasn't deterred. Even when my stylist didn't seem happy with the idea. She laid out the plan, how it would be done over a series of eight-week haircuts. "But you're going to be surprised at how much this will age you," she said, perusing my scalp with her fingers. "You're a good seventy-percent gray now, girl."

Just to hasten it along, I asked her to cut it extra-short.

We'll see how I feel as it grows out. I still have the option of running to her, in tears, and begging for my 7A auburn back.

But maybe I'm really ready not to be twenty-five any more.