There are so many things you learn as you get older that nobody tells you about. Or rather, it’s either that they don’t tell you, or that they told you and you were too young and insouciante to register any utility to the fact. Some are fairly significant while others are just little bits of everyday life that add up to the age on your ID card.

I kinda feel like this is an observation too depressing to even linger on. Who needs to articulate reality when it’s all around us every day? This past week I didn’t feel much like writing because I got too caught up in this idea. It started in the morning after I tried to convince my body to turn out an extra mile while running—and it continued while I was drying my hair and staring at the strands. The gray hairs growing in. They come in so fast, and they do nothing to help me perpetrate an image of “I’m not tired of this shit yet” professionalism. 

Of course I have spent years paying attention to men and women of all ages. Even if I can’t tell exactly how old is, I can generally get a good idea of where someone’s head is at by how they respond to things. How willing they are to get out of their chair to try to solve an annoying problem. And yes, even what kind of a hair day they are having.

I don’t remember any teacher writing on a blackboard something like this:

Someday you will notice that the color of your hair is draining away, and you will be faced with the decision of whether or not you want to do anything about it.

Now I know that hair color is not a huge deal—and indeed many humans go gray every day without giving it much of a thought. But there are indeed those of us who find that this decision, while small, does add to a greater calculus. It’s a detail in the story we like to believe about ourselves—as well as a detail in whatever characterization that other people are judging us to be like.

I hate going to the hairdresser. I hate the small talk, and I hate the sinks in the back of the shop that were most certainly invented by someone who never possessed a neck. The visits used to feel more palatable because I felt like I didn’t need to go that often….or that all if I’m being honest. Brown hair that could just use a trim every now and then.

I’ve got a handful of sisters and we are all dog paddling our way through our 40s. Some of us have opted to continue coloring our hair and find the trips bothersome, but a part of life. Others have forsaken this idea altogether and they now have these amazing, thick streaks of gray through their hair. In no way am I saying that one group is better—such features of the body are an intensely personal decision and go a long way in helping a person feel themselves. 

And even as I write this and think about what I wrote before, I know that I am full of crap. I admitted that allowing gray hair to grow in would make me look tired and less, perhaps, engaging than if I had a full mane of brown strands. I’d look more tired and worn out. But then I think about my sisters who don’t color their hair and I see that they have loads of fire, energy and years to live. They don’t give a crap and are happy living their lives. Brown or gray, my intellectual brain sees the beauty in both.

But at the end of the day, I am still faced with that truism that was never written on the schoolboard. I now am deciding—every two months—whether I want to keep this ridiculous practice up. And if I decide to do so, how old will be the point where I decide to abandon the practice completely? Both because it will at some stage look ridiculous (à la “Who are you trying to fool”) as well as because I will finally reach the point where I am just sick of fighting the hands of time. 

About a year or so ago, my 80+ year old Dad lost one of his teeth. I think it was the one behind an incisor. Or maybe it was an incisor. I don’t remember because I am getting old—but the point is that he went to the dentist and reported the random falling out. The hole in the front of his mouth didn’t hurt, and he was thankfully still very much enjoying a functioning mouth. The dentist gave him two options: either pay thousands of dollars to put in a fake tooth, or just live with it.

He decided that he was just going to live with it. As he told me this story and his personal decision, it made perfect sense.

Admittedly, as a kid if someone told me “If you are lucky, you will slowly watch yourself age until you fall apart completely,” I probably just would have shrugged. Because it is such an obvious thing that it doesn’t really require announcing. But the elements that make up this larger observation will keep catching you up. And at every single decision point, they will bring to bear an inordinately large amount of significance.

It’s been two months since my hair was last colored and to me it looks pretty two-toned in the opposite way that one would want. And so tomorrow I am going back to the hairdresser. I’m not ready to allow all of my teeth to fall out, and nor am I willing to allow my pale skin to look ghastly against silvery brown and very fine hair. Is it all depressing to even write about? I don’t really know. Maybe it’s more ridiculous than depressing—but then again life is best lived with a sense of humor and this is just another absurd aspect that is well worth reveling in for a bit.

Having said all of this, this whole hair situation could honestly be worse.  Yes worse than being dead before I reach an average life expectancy: I could still be that shade of so-called “summer blonde” that Maurizio (the summarily fired hair colorist) gave to me as soon as I emerged from lockdown last year. Yes I’d rather be as gray as my father was in his mid-forties than what that short-lived experience felt like. The fact that I have these decision points to make at all means it’s not so bad after all. I plan on being an amazing looking silver hair jack-o-lantern if I get to see my eighties.