Graying At the Temples

Last night I sat across from my twin brother and saw the gray in his beard, maybe really taking it in for the first time. 

An old friend messaged me out of the blue with a picture of him and his son. When I sent him back a picture of new glasses and new haircut, he said that he basically feels like in every picture he looks the same, except a little bit older and a little bit grayer. 

Today I was listening to the alternative radio station. On Sunday mornings they typically have Resurrection Sunday which plays alternative tracks from the 70s and 80s. When I first moved to this city at 13 I remember how cool I thought it was and Sunday mornings for much of my high school. I would get up and listen to Resurrection Sunday, even taping songs that I liked. ("Make a little birdhouse in your soul....") While I'm not always up and sometimes I've had to work on Sunday mornings, it is a thing that I like to put on when I can, when I'm up, when I'm in control of the radio. But the radio station recently adjusted their format, going to something a little bit more corporate. I was interested to see if they kept Resurrection Sunday. And they did but they didn't. The new show only runs until 11:00 instead of noon and it's called "Postmodern." (I'm not sure that word means what you think it means.) It includes a lot of songs from the '90s, so songs that I grew up listening to as newer alternative tracks when I first started listening to Resurrection Sunday. I was sort of devastated. I felt really old. Something that I've listened to for a really long time was suddenly gone. And then when I started doing the math I realized that I'd been listening to it for almost 25 years. That it had been 25 years since I had been that girl sitting in my bedroom listening to music that my parents had no interest in and reading books that I had secretly checked out from the library, giving myself my first education on non-mainstream sexuality. Those are some of my favorite memories and they were bright spots in a really depressed and stressed out time in my life. Those memories feel so close but they were actually quite a long time ago.

 I haven't dyed my hair in a bit. (I really should write down when I do these things.) For all of my life I have dyed my hair for funsies. Because I wanted to. Because I dislike how dark my natural hair color is. I like my hair a lighter shade of brown or red. I have a box of hair dye sitting in the bathroom, just waiting. I've been noticing more and more the gray in my hair. About a month ago I felt really self-conscious seeing the gray at my left temple in the mirror after I knew that my newest boyfriend had been looking at that side of my face and hair while we laid in bed talking earlier in the day. When I told him about it I recognized how silly and vain it sounded. Honestly he didn't have his glasses on, so he probably couldn't see it at all. He's also a full decade older than me so he's already dealt with a lot of these feelings, but it did still bother me at the time.   

Growing up there was not a time that I remember where my mother and my grandmother were not dying their hair explicitly to cover gray. My mother diligently dyed her hair every couple of months to cover the gray. No one ever sat me down and told me that women with gray hair looked old and that looking old was bad. They didn't have to, right? It's one of those culturally indoctrinated beliefs, backed up by all the things we see around us, the advertisements, the behaviors of our mothers and grandmothers, comments people make about each other and themselves. This idea that we are less attractive the older we look and so should learn to lessen or hide the signs of aging. 

But as I was talking to the boyfriend who is closer to my age, who is about to turn 40 in January, about feeling self-conscious about these signs of aging, another thing hit me. There are times when I look in the mirror at that gray and my temples and the random shiny silver hairs that sparkle among the almost black hair and I am amazed. I am amazed that they are there. I never thought I would live this long. Now I'm not like some people where I had a number, where I thought I wouldn't live past 27 or 40. I just never got to a place where I could imagine this age, my hair being gray, wrinkles. But I did get here. In many ways it's been hard won, but I have won it. I am so proud of that.

And now I still have to think about whether or not I want to dye my hair. I don't want my daughter thinking that she has to cover up those things, that she is less attractive for being whatever age she is, for looking that age. Hell, now at 38, I have three lovers who all look at me like I am amazingly beautiful and the best thing on the planet. I don't have to wonder whether they want me or not, whether or not they're with me physically just because I'm the only option or because they are expected to be as my partner. I made it this far and I'm really proud of it. I'm better than I ever was and I'm proud of that. I like my hair red, I like my hair lighter than it is, but a part of me is proud of the gray and doesn't want to cover it up. 

I'm also thinking that I should embrace the new Sunday show. It still has some of the songs I loved from the old show, it just covers a longer period of music history. I don't begrudge new music in general, why should I feel that way about adding music to this canon? I can also use new technology like Spotify to listen to the music I miss, and I don't even have to wait until Sunday morning. Just because I am getting older, doesn't mean that I have to stagnate. 

Update after the initial writing: I did decide to dye my hair. I am hoping it turns out as bright as I want it to be, a red contrast to the black cat's eye glasses I just got. I am dying it because I want that change, that lighter different color. Not because the gray makes me look old. This dye isn't designed to cover gray and I know that the gray in my temples doesn't hold color for very long. I don't want it to. I just want a difference. Something new. It may be a fine line to walk, the am I dying it for myself and the color or to hide gray. Nothing is ever simple and direct. I hope to teach my daughter that it is all complicated and sometimes The best we can do is to think about a thing before we do it, knowing that the answer is never entirely one or another.