Careful what you wish for

I’ve commented before on the wide age difference between me and my siblings. Seventeen, 14, and 10 years separates us. This means that it was my siblings who turned my father’s hair gray, and it was me who turned it white.

My father was 40 when I was born, so I’ve never known him with dark hair. In fact, when I was a kid and we were in Indian Guides, his Indian name was Big Snow, while mine was Little Blizzard. (My name on account of my hyperactivity, my father’s on account of his hair.)

All my life I was told that the men in my family gray early. My father was already very gray by the time he was thirty (almost three years younger than I am now). Oddly, I accepted my fate early and with surprising ease when I found my first gray hair at 16. By this time, my brothers were already in their early thirties and showing gray, so I figured what’s the use worrying about it. There’s always dye, if it bothered me too much. But I didn’t think it would.

And it hasn’t. Because guess what? I’m not as gray as I thought I’d be, and I’m not as gray as my father or brothers were when they were in their early thirties. (I’m sticking my tongue out at them right now.) More so, I find I like the gray I have. My hair is graying uniformly, and I think it adds a little character. Furthermore, I’m one step closer to having the light-colored hair I always wanted.

All my life, I’ve hated my hair. It’s thick, dark brown, and, when it grows out, wavy, making it so unmanageable it gets talented at defying styling products and gravity in general. (If you see me wearing hats a lot, this is what’s going on underneath.) Throughout my childhood and teens, I envied people with thin, blond hair.

Around 25, a miraculous thing started to happen. My hair seemed thinner, straighter, less abundant, and less resistant to change. I was finally winning the battle! I simply figured that I had either, after 25 years, willed my hair to adhere to my wishes for thinner, straighter hair or my age had something to do with it.

It wasn’t for another three years that I realized what was really happening.

I came into a sort of knowing little by little, gradually, like becoming aware of a haunting. A sick sense (in my stomach). I don’t know, call it tele-pathetic. I didn’t know what it was, but there was a change taking place. I could feel wind and rain and, worse, gazes on the top of my head when I’d never before.

“What’s happening?” I thought. “I must be losing my mind!”

And then one day, all the terrible clues fell into place when I took a break from working and leaned my head against the paneled wall behind me and felt the wood on my scalp.

Oh, I’m not losing my mind, just my hair.

But is there really a difference?

To say the least, I was shocked. To the say the most, I was terrified and in denial. I grew up hearing we gray early, but nobody ever mentioned balding early! I felt duped and, worse, blind to the evidence around me.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was born bald, and I think that’s the way he stayed until he died at 89, and my uncle (my dad’s brother) and his sons started balding early. Not to mention my father’s head is like looking at a misty horizon. But he’s 72.

Despite this evidence, I started to investigate and asked my oldest brother how old he was when he started losing his hair.

“Oh, around forty.”

“Forty! I’m 28!”

So much for having a brush with destiny to look forward to. You no longer need the brush. And there comes a point where the only thing you’re combing is the bathroom sink for how many hairs you lost today.

Thank goodness I’m tall. No one can see up there.

Admittedly, my hair isn’t as bad as I’m making it sound. In a picture or from a distance, you can’t tell I’m graying or balding, other than by the receding hairline, which, and if you can believe this, I actually like because when I was a kid, I wanted that, too.

So, I guess, as a kid you could say I wanted thin hair and a receding hairline.

And who ever said you don’t get the things you want in life?

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