Not that we do birthdays up in here but…

…my brother just turned 35, which means my mom is having a “milestone” birthday shortly (in a few days, and if anyone asks she is 39 and my brother and I were adopted oh and please don’t send me any religious police comments about not joking about denying links of filiation), and my much loathed milestone birthday is in a few months. This is why I am happy not to celebrate birthdays because this year is not the good year to celebrate birthdays in this household.

Today gave me another reason to repress. I found my first grey hair. My hair is dark blonde, and any questionable hairs up to this point were dismissed as very light blonde. The hair I found today was definitely silver. The point of this post is not birthdays though.

Both of my grandmothers had roughly the same color hair as myself and I always wondered whose hair I had as my parents both have black hair, so it was one of them. My maternal grandmother did not have a grey hair on her head, she stayed a dark blonde until she passed on in her mid seventies. She had lovely soft hair that was slightly wavy. My paternal grandmother (the weird college-educated northerner, Norwegian to boot), on the other hand, was the queen of the homemade Gwen Stefani- homegirl touched up her roots with Clorox! About once or twice a year she would get her Marilyn Monroe done in a salon and then do the roots with clorox and a toothbrush. She could also rock coral lipstick, which I cannot do. Anyway, I digress. The hair I found today is exactly the color of my paternal grandmother’s roots. And she had some grey hair going on between cloroxing. So I had a freaky flashback moment, the same way when I look at my feet (which are definitely her feet). The milestone year and the thoughts of an impending full head of grey hair and picturing myself pouring clorox over my head in the kitchen sink and brushing it through with a toothbrush are kinda bugging me out.

You girls with brown or black hair can’t get it. You get your first grey hairs at like 19 and just chalk it up to increased visibility. No one can call 19 old so everyone giggles at your grey and moves on. Pepaw Husband up in here has been rocking some white hairs himself and because it started when he was in his late 20s he could deal, plus he knew that his dad was white headed at 35 and he needed to start dealing anyway, so he never linked it to age, he is just like bla bla genetic destiny. The difference in my situation is two-fold- the women in my entourage who had grey hair fought the grey and had great stylists or clorox. They weren’t all white headed and proud like my FIL. Second, I was able to plausibly deny the existence of grey hair because it is hard to tell with blonde hair until almost age {deleted}. Some of you, friends of mine, have had ten or fifteen years to deal with this foolishness and be like pepaw and laugh it off. I’m not ready. I pictured myself all Liv Ullmann up in here riding into the sunset like my other grandma with the same hair. I better not find another hair tomorrow.

And if I do, I won’t tell my mom. She has had enough for one week.

Couldn’t get my grandma’s size 0 though, I guess I can’t have everything.

Tags : I'm not ready