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.