Going Gray

So here I am, an old dog trying to learn a new trick:  how to write a blog, how to share some of my thoughts on senioritis in general and some on my exciting retirement projects.  But that's for later.

Right now, I'm getting used to the idea of having gray hair.

I went gray after over 40 years of attempting to reject the aging process by coloring my hair, colors ranging from OLR (old lady red) to beige.  ("Blonde," it seems to me, implies something other than the color of an aging woman's hair.)  My natural color – as near as I can remember – was a kind of reddish-brown.

For a while coloring meant regular trips to the local drugstore, bringing home a hair-coloring solution, trying to keep from splashing color all over the bathroom walls (and usually spending more time cleaning up than dying), and breathing shallowly to avoid the foul-smelling ammonia or whatever it is that smells in those formulations.

I finally decided I couldn’t deal with the mess anymore so took on the time and expense of having my hair colored at a beauty salon.  For a while OLR was the color of choice.  After a while it seemed too garish (esp. as the years advanced), so I toned it down to that beige color adopted by SO many women of a certain age.  Boring.  But I stuck with it until the cosmos decreed otherwise.

My hair is thin, exposing my scalp to sun damage, leading eventually to a shaved head.  For a while I wore a wig.  It was fun.  I liked having HAIR!  Not so thin.  The wig was the same beige my (colored) hair had been, same style, so I didn’t feel like I made too obvious a change.  As my hair grew back in, I thought, "Well, I'll just dye my hair to match the wig.  No one will know the difference." 

Well – the scalp issues continued.  I had to use a special shampoo that would strip the hair of artificial color.  Not only that, but while I was (more or less) hairless, the wig pretty much stayed in place, held by peculiar little strips of tape. Once my hair started growing back, the wig began slipping around.  I didn’t have enough of my own hair to pin down the wig effectively, and my (by now) gray hair was showing around the edges.  Everytime I caught sight of myself in a mirror, the wig was askew, or I'd catch myself adjusting my "hair" as I cruised the aisles of the supermarket.

Fine.  The hair-coloring business, the wig, the worry was getting way too complicated.  Forget it (to put it politely) and go gray.  Which I did.  But....gray or grey?  Next post.