With Such Grace

The other day I found a gray hair. Now this is not the first gray hair I have found, no the first one I found was on the eve of my 30th birthday. Talk about messing with my head. (No pun intended) I haven’t had many, like almost barely any for which I have been eternally grateful. But this gray hair was different. It was different bc it taunted me, it mocked me and basically just laughed in my horrified face. I saw it on my head and I proceeded to try and pluck it out. Only every time I went for it it slipped away and I ended pulling out a perfectly good chestnut brown hair. I stood in the mirror, tweezers in hand, and tried over and over again to pull it out. My arms were getting tired, my stomach in knots but there was no way I was going to let this ugly gray hair squat on my head. Finally, after a half hour of pulling out innocent brown hairs I finally got it. Phew! I could relax. Or so I thought. Two days later looking in the mirror there was that gross gray hair! What the…!!!

I spent another half hour trying to get it out, determined to get this little fucker. I finally grabbed the hair out of my head, flushed it down the toilet and combed thru my head to make sure there were no remnants of gray. What should have been a moment of victory, a la Rocky beating Clubber Lane, it wasn’t. Instead I began to worry. This hair was really in there and probably had many evil little hair friends and I was going to wake up any day with a head full of gray hair. I was starting to feel like I was doomed to old ladydome any minute and to be honest I just can’t take it. I simply cannot take the stress of wondering when I am going to start to drop. Trying to convince myself that it is a laugh line bc I am just so happy or it has just been the summer heat that has made my pores look so big. I should watch TV expressionless so my face doesn’t freeze in a furrowed position or I have to train myself to sleep on my back so my pillow doesn’t pull my face down. It is all just too much for me. I don’t know what I am going to do when my face is not my face anymore. I mean I am no Giselle but I want to keep what I’ve got!!

These are the thoughts that keep my up at night. I always thought I would grow old gracefully but it is clear that is not the case. And I REALLY do not want to have a face lift, I have seen Meg Ryan and it is not pretty. So now what? How am I going to get over this hurdle? The fact of the matter is that no matter how good the genes, your face at 50 is not your face at 30. It makes me want to die. So this is what I have been thinking about and thinking about and then I remembered this story:


A little over a year ago my younger brother was moving in with his girlfriend. Now any one who has lived with some one knows, no matter how long you have been together, how well you know each other, there is always an adjustment period that takes place. Conflicts will arise, some bickering will occur and there is usually one big struggle that you have with your soon to be roommate, which in retrospect, always ends up being over something trivial. For my brother and his girlfriend that was the bathroom towels. She wanted pretty, matching (clean) hand towels, which meant that the ones my brother had previously had in the bathroom had to go. He was not pleased. He wanted his towels in there. She was not backing down, his towels had to go. In her mind (and in many of our minds) why would some one choose a gross ratty hand towel over something that was aesthetically pleasing to the eye and to the touch? This battle waged on for a while frustrating both sides of the linens aisle. One day when we were helping them move a piece of furniture my brother and husband were riding in the moving van together and my brother was venting to Kris about his girlfriend taking over everything. My sage of a husband gave the best advice he could; “The sooner you accept it, the easier it will be.”

“The sooner you accept it, the easier it will be.” This piece of advice, this one sentence allowed my brother to transition into the next stage of his relationship with ease. Whenever his girlfriend suggests a new decorative idea, he just says to himself “the sooner you accept it, the easier it will be.” I can almost see the words scrolling across my husband’s head whenever I offer up any brilliant decision on our lives. My brother’s girlfriend, who works in hospital as a therapist, tells her patients when they ask why they have to be in the hospital, “the sooner you accept it, the easier it will be.” I have decided that this is going to be my motto.

This piece of advice that was meant for one guy moving in with his girlfriend from another guy living with his wife will hopefully allow me to grow old gracefully. It is not going to be easy and I am sure I will have to be reminded on occasion. But I am not going to let that gray hair wrap itself around my neck like a noose. By accepting that we all age will enable me to hold my head high the first time I have to book an appointment to have my hair colored. It will allow me to look back on old photos of my young face with pride. I will feel rested from an amazing night sleep in the fetal position, face squashed against the pillow. I will laugh more knowing that some simple restylane injection around my mouth will plump away those despicable…oh dear. Well I said it wouldn’t be easy.