Turning Grey

It’s like standing in November in the middle of a park that’s filled with trees and looking on in awe at the yellowing leaves of autumn. I guess it would be beautiful witnessing that, breathtaking even to look on at the trees locked in a battle with time; bending, shaking, murmuring, protesting against the bite of the wind; trying to hold on to their leaves and, in defiance, sending out these riotous colors as if to thumb their noses at the conventional beauty of spring.

It would be beautiful, I guess, to look on at that. But it would also be difficult to stand there in that park and look at those leaves clinging to branches or swirling to the ground, and not think, “This is autumn. The year is drawing to an end. Winter is around the corner.”

Beautiful. Breathtaking. Scary. That’s what it feels like when you wake up one morning and you look at your reflection in the mirror and you realize that the little white patch at the side or the front of your head isn’t just soap or fluff from your pillows or lint from the shirt you just fought to fit into.

You stand, you admire it, you acknowledge the beauty of age and wisdom and then you zoom in. On the fact that you have aged. And you start to see lines where there weren’t lines before. Laugh lines. Worry lines. Warts. And before you know it, you are spending the entire morning in a frenzy whipping together all the soaps, creams, age-defying moisturizers, cosmetics and dyes that you can find because it hits you. You’re in autumn. And just like those trees, you’ll do everything it takes to stave off winter just for a little bit.

This morning I saw my first grey hairs. Three strands. Front and center. So central in fact that if I were to take a comb and draw it from the midst of my eyebrows through my hair, I feel pretty certain that two strands will land on the left while the third will land on the right.

Three strands straddling the realm of black and white- strand tips still black and roots as white as snow. Three strands insisting that they should be acknowledged, demanding that I should pay homage as they lay there, turncoats turning white in a sea of black.

I stood staring at my reflection for a while and then it hit me, like a slap in the face.

Eegad! Old age is coming!

Photo Credit: Pixabay