Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Hair
I think I started coloring my hair when I was sixteen when a product called Summer Blond came on the market. I had light hair as a small girl, and as it gradually got darker with age, I had some difficulty adjusting to this new appearance. My brown hair was not the rich deep browns that my two sisters had been born with. Mary's hair was dark and thick and wavy. Kathy's hair was straighter, but also a deep brown. My hair was just a mousey color, one I was never happy with, and so I began to use the supposedly natural lightening from the sun that Summer Blond would create. The problem was that with each application, my hair grew lighter and lighter so that by the time I was 18, it was clearly just bleached a monochromatic almost white color. I was never comfortable with this artificial color either.
I had many things to be self conscious about. My legs were too skinny, my stomach was too round. When I was about ten, people used to call out, "Patty, hold your stomach in." I never got the hang of that. Boys used to poke fun at my legs - straight as bean poles. My sisters and I were pretty well endowed with ample bosoms, some might have called my sister Mary "stacked." I hated wearing a bathing suit. Catholic school training had convinced me my body was a vast source of evil that I should keep covered as much as possible. I even considered wearing a bathing suit in the bathtub so I could maintain modesty.
For a time I stopped coloring my hair. Young women of the 1970's were determined to be natural in every way - unshaved legs and underarms too. The pop musical Hair was a big hit and explored the ways people were expressing their nonconformity by letting their hair be whatever it wanted to be -- long, wild and flowing free. So I stopped coloring my hair. I was self conscious about the gradual process of letting the super blond slowly descend to the ends of my long hair while the hair around my face was several shades darker. This problem of roots showing later became a fashion in itself, but by the time Madonna and others ushered in this look, I had moved on to other ways of altering my hair. When Stephen and I married in 1976, my hair was its natural color. I didn't start highlighting my hair until I moved back to Florida and my sister, now Kate instead of Kathy, had become a hair stylist and suggested some highlights. She suggested a perm for awhile too and those months or, goodness maybe a year or two, I wore permed hair. Those were probably my worst hair years.Looking at pictures of me with permed hair brings certain twinges of regret for such a style disaster. Later, Kate convinced me that highlights were no longer enough and she started to put a color all over every strand. For awhile, I was a super blond again. I didn't realize just how light it was until I looked at myself in pictures. And so I was self-conscious once again.
The truth is I have never been satisfied with my hair. My younger sisters Peggy, Mimi (now Maureen), and Teresa all have thick hair. Maureen's is very curly too. I am the only one with fine, limp hair. Somehow, I missed the dominant gene that my mother clearly possessed. Her own hair was thick and blond as a young woman. She too, though, colored her hair throughout most of her life - highlights and sometimes all over. Until later, when her hair turned a beautiful silvery blond shade of gray. Then she left it alone.
My sister Mary died when she was only 44 from complications of brain tumor surgery and the follow up radiation treatments that destroyed her pituitary gland. She lived for five years after the surgery as a disabled person, her short-term memory destroyed. Dependent on as many as thirty medications, she probably died from the effects of so many drugs in her system which depleted her electrolytes - potassium is needed to keep the heart beating and the coroner told us that for some reason which he could not determine, her heart just suddenly stopped beating. I promised myself after her death that I would never lament reaching another year, or dread another birthday. My mother died of lung cancer one year almost to the day before Mary died. She was 65.
My sister Kate's hair turned a beautiful silver gray some years ago. She was proud of the color and abandoned the practice of coloring her hair with shades of auburn. My sister Kate's story is more complicated. Aging for her has fallen into the category of the worst case scenario. Advanced dementia has caused her life to end but keep on going at the same time. She lives in a memory care facility. I go see her as many as four or five times a week sometimes. Seeing her in this state is one of the hardest experiences of my life.
Soon I will be 68, and finally I am happy with my hair. It has turned a silver and golden shade of gray. So, the title of this blog is "getting to be gray" since not everyone gets the chance to grow old. Not everyone gets the chance to achieve contentment with the small things. Life and death and war and injustice are still a challenge, but my hair and legs and even my rounded stomach do not occupy my thoughts so much anymore. Although I am always striving to lose weight.
I read today that if we are ever going to change this age obsessed society where everything young is valued and everything old is subject to ridicule, every wrinkle is a source of dread, then those of us lucky enough to reach the age of 68 or 78 or 88, should celebrate their signs of age - the wrinkles and the gray hair. When my grandson Huxley asked me why I had so many cracks in my face, I laughed and my daughter apologized. I didn't have a good answer for hm at that moment. But the next time I see him I am going to tell him my cracks and wrinkles are all I have left of the millions of smiles I have enjoyed in my life. The cracks in my face are proof of a happy life, of a life well lived in spite of my insufficient hair.
Not everyone is so lucky to live, to thrive, and find new ways to enjoy life. I am one of the lucky ones who is "getting to be gray."
I had many things to be self conscious about. My legs were too skinny, my stomach was too round. When I was about ten, people used to call out, "Patty, hold your stomach in." I never got the hang of that. Boys used to poke fun at my legs - straight as bean poles. My sisters and I were pretty well endowed with ample bosoms, some might have called my sister Mary "stacked." I hated wearing a bathing suit. Catholic school training had convinced me my body was a vast source of evil that I should keep covered as much as possible. I even considered wearing a bathing suit in the bathtub so I could maintain modesty.
For a time I stopped coloring my hair. Young women of the 1970's were determined to be natural in every way - unshaved legs and underarms too. The pop musical Hair was a big hit and explored the ways people were expressing their nonconformity by letting their hair be whatever it wanted to be -- long, wild and flowing free. So I stopped coloring my hair. I was self conscious about the gradual process of letting the super blond slowly descend to the ends of my long hair while the hair around my face was several shades darker. This problem of roots showing later became a fashion in itself, but by the time Madonna and others ushered in this look, I had moved on to other ways of altering my hair. When Stephen and I married in 1976, my hair was its natural color. I didn't start highlighting my hair until I moved back to Florida and my sister, now Kate instead of Kathy, had become a hair stylist and suggested some highlights. She suggested a perm for awhile too and those months or, goodness maybe a year or two, I wore permed hair. Those were probably my worst hair years.Looking at pictures of me with permed hair brings certain twinges of regret for such a style disaster. Later, Kate convinced me that highlights were no longer enough and she started to put a color all over every strand. For awhile, I was a super blond again. I didn't realize just how light it was until I looked at myself in pictures. And so I was self-conscious once again.
The truth is I have never been satisfied with my hair. My younger sisters Peggy, Mimi (now Maureen), and Teresa all have thick hair. Maureen's is very curly too. I am the only one with fine, limp hair. Somehow, I missed the dominant gene that my mother clearly possessed. Her own hair was thick and blond as a young woman. She too, though, colored her hair throughout most of her life - highlights and sometimes all over. Until later, when her hair turned a beautiful silvery blond shade of gray. Then she left it alone.
My sister Mary died when she was only 44 from complications of brain tumor surgery and the follow up radiation treatments that destroyed her pituitary gland. She lived for five years after the surgery as a disabled person, her short-term memory destroyed. Dependent on as many as thirty medications, she probably died from the effects of so many drugs in her system which depleted her electrolytes - potassium is needed to keep the heart beating and the coroner told us that for some reason which he could not determine, her heart just suddenly stopped beating. I promised myself after her death that I would never lament reaching another year, or dread another birthday. My mother died of lung cancer one year almost to the day before Mary died. She was 65.
My sister Kate's hair turned a beautiful silver gray some years ago. She was proud of the color and abandoned the practice of coloring her hair with shades of auburn. My sister Kate's story is more complicated. Aging for her has fallen into the category of the worst case scenario. Advanced dementia has caused her life to end but keep on going at the same time. She lives in a memory care facility. I go see her as many as four or five times a week sometimes. Seeing her in this state is one of the hardest experiences of my life.
Soon I will be 68, and finally I am happy with my hair. It has turned a silver and golden shade of gray. So, the title of this blog is "getting to be gray" since not everyone gets the chance to grow old. Not everyone gets the chance to achieve contentment with the small things. Life and death and war and injustice are still a challenge, but my hair and legs and even my rounded stomach do not occupy my thoughts so much anymore. Although I am always striving to lose weight.
I read today that if we are ever going to change this age obsessed society where everything young is valued and everything old is subject to ridicule, every wrinkle is a source of dread, then those of us lucky enough to reach the age of 68 or 78 or 88, should celebrate their signs of age - the wrinkles and the gray hair. When my grandson Huxley asked me why I had so many cracks in my face, I laughed and my daughter apologized. I didn't have a good answer for hm at that moment. But the next time I see him I am going to tell him my cracks and wrinkles are all I have left of the millions of smiles I have enjoyed in my life. The cracks in my face are proof of a happy life, of a life well lived in spite of my insufficient hair.
Not everyone is so lucky to live, to thrive, and find new ways to enjoy life. I am one of the lucky ones who is "getting to be gray."
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| My sister Kate after I blew her hair dry. |
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