Coming out of Walmart, I ran into a former student wheeling carts into the "Super" store in which he worked.  "Hi, Kevin," I said.  He paused...looked puzzled.  A long silence..."You're going gray!"  "Yes," I said, flippantly.  "I've decided to quit dying my hair."  As I strode past defiantly, he called out...."It looks great."

In pioneer days, no one worried about going gray...it was all about teamwork, survival, love, and staying alive. Oh, I already said that.  And, orgasms weren't really all that worried about either.  But, I bet it was just as passionate...or not. F...ing Hollywood.

Last night at a housewarming party, I took inventory. The room exuded baby boomers, my age, within five to ten years. The men's heads were gray, silver, or hairless.  I was the only woman with "visible" roots.  The other's heads sparkled in red, blonde, black, brunette or a combination of all four.  In one conversation, about hair, I was told I was "brave" for deciding to quit dying.  I don't know if I've ever felt "brave" over the past three weeks.  I've felt afraid, indecisive, astonished, observant of my face in a way I've never felt before, and kind of relieved to not have to stop what I'm doing every nine or ten days and apply some kind of color to my roots.  Relieved that I won't be trying to scrub out the dye that's dripped onto the travertine floor or the tiled grout around the sink any more.  And, happy, that I am finally accepting the fact that my hair in its natural state is gray...more silver with traces of the dark, dark brown, almost black I was born with.

I'm three weeks into my decision to quit dying my hair. A wide silver stripe runs down the center of my head, causing people to look twice or feel the need to comment.  Three weeks ago, when I announced my decision, my 27-year-old daughter immediately said I had to do something to make it "blend better."  She pulled out some bleach, took me to Sally's where we stocked up on a cap to pull hair through for "highlighting", clips to hold my hair up, a "small" hair straightener to keep my hair looking "nice" instead of the frizzy mess it usually arranges itself into.  She did a great job.  I got compliments from all directions: my students, co-workers, friends, neighbors.  With each compliment, I saw it as an opportunity to explain my "going gray" decision.  More than an attempt to explain my decision to them, I was, I think, trying to reaffirm my decision to myself.

Yesterday, my neighbor peeked over the fence while I was pulling out this year's garden left-overs to ask, "Are you wearing a hat?"  Looking me over, he smiled, exclaimed, "Oh, you're going au naturale," while launching into a monolog on plastic surgery to remove "turkey neck" being the only age deterent that he felt might be worthwhile.  A "lady" friend had just undergone this surgery and "she looks great."

Today, a thirty something co-worker asked if I couldn't just dye my hair to match the gray.  I had to explain that,"No, every beautician I'd ever talked with said it must just be cut out because of the combination of dyes I've been using for the past thirty years." I've been going gray since I was 25...or at least dying my hair since then to get rid of the gray.  It's genetic.  My mother was gray well before thirty. "Otherwise," I tell her, "I would have begun the process five years ago.

Myself, I've been looking at the stripe widen over the past three weeks, wondering exactly what it's going to look like when it's all silver.  I try to imagine that it will be beautiful, that I'll start to feel great about it, but I actually have a date next week...and I would look a lot younger...and perhaps feel a lot more attractive, if I just went out and covered it back up and let people guess my age just a little bit longer.