Snow On The Mountain

People have been lying to me for years!

My hair started to gray when I was in my twenties. There were indiscriminate flecks throughout, but the bulk of this early encroachment was confined to the temples.

“It makes you look distinguished,” was the lie of choice for most.

I believed them.

“Sure, my hair is turning gray, but I’m not old,” I concluded. No biggie.

It could have been much worse. My best friend from high school started to lose his hair at about the time I started to gray. Eventually, his hair loss was so bad that he experimented with a toupee. It was quite an experiment.

As he tells it, he made an announcement to his co-workers before the unveiling. He reasoned that this would take a lot of the awkwardness out of the situation. The next day, he wore it to the office.

It was still awkward.

The toupee didn’t look half-bad on him, but you could still tell that he was wearing one. He thought that it would help his self-image. Aside from discovering that this was not true, the biggest problem that he had with it was that it was, at times, very uncomfortable to wear – especially in the summer.

He began to wear it like a hat – some days on and some days off.

We talked about it like friends, and laughed about it between ourselves. Sooner or later, we all do some pretty crazy things to try to improve our appearance.

For me, it was hair straitening. Yep, in the eighties I subjected my scalp to a different kind of lye. This wasn’t a reaction to the gray; instead it was a style choice. I wish that I had a photo of me back then to share, but I don’t. This photo of James Brown and Al Sharpton will have to do. You get the idea.

I didn’t say that it was a good style choice.

As much as I would like to have my natural hair color back, I have never dyed my hair. I know that I wouldn’t keep up the treatment. Much like my friend, I would end up being on again off again gray.

That would be tragic.

So I’m left with my ever-graying mane and that’s that. I keep it short so that I don’t end up looking like Barbara Bush, but that’s about all that I do to address the situation.

This is just one of the many changes that we all experience as we age. In time, we will all probably gain weight, lose hair, hearing, and eyesight, and generally fall apart, piece by piece. It makes little sense to worry about these changes, since they are inevitable.

The best that we can do is to try to handle them with grace and a little bit of dignity.

Maybe I’ll try the bald look.

It seems to have worked well for Michael Jordan.

Tagged as: aging, coping with aging, gray hair, hair loss, raycolon, self-esteem, snow on the mountain, wellness