Thank You for Your Prayers

Thank you for your prayers and concern. I do appreciate them. But I am not dying. Nor am I sick. I am just embracing my gray!

For a few years now, I have contemplated the fact I am aging. Not in an obsessive way, even though I have kidded about it like I am seriously bothered by it, but in what I think is a reasonable way. Why not? All the botox and hair dye in the world only makes for an eventual Joker-like creature with stark raven hair. While 2019 was a year of many changes, and true to my nature many of them were impulsive, I can never be accused of impulsively going gray. It has taken 30 long years.

I stopped making New Year’s Resolutions several years back. I have never liked being told what to do, even when I am the one doing the telling. So when I planned to go to the gym, eat more healthily, or lose weight with the beginning of a new year, I would quietly sabotage my own well-laid, boastful talk by blatantly ignoring myself. That’s why I didn’t let myself know too much in advance I was going gray, to avoid any undue self-confrontation.

It was not a New Year’s Resolution. It began as procrastination. I had my hair colored in November as usual. Since I am the queen of procrastination, I got lazy in December because I was not going to be spending the holidays with my children. I occasionally sprayed a temporary touch-up color in my hair, but mostly I threw a headband on to cover the receding color at my forehead hairline. Once the gray moved farther back, I exchanged headbands for winter caps. I thought I looked fetching.

Since I had given so much lip service to “I’m going gray after I retire”, “I’m going gray next year”, and “I’m going gray after my son’s wedding”, my hairstylist told me how easy it would be. I was nervous. What if I didn’t like it? I called her and made what I thought was a tentative appointment. My dental hygienist spent the first 15 minutes of my last appointment Googling “short gray haircuts over 50”, critiquing each one on me, we settled on one we thought looked best. Me and my big mouth. It was being written in stone all around me and I hadn’t truly made up my mind yet.

The night before my appointment, I Googled more “short gray haircuts”, but this time, “over 60”. Then I checked all the photos of myself on my phone over the last few months to see how my hair looked freshly colored, straightened, and down . . . I couldn’t find a single one. In each photo, I had my hair severely pulled back, and often hidden, with a headband on as well. I frustratingly swore it was time for a change.

On the morning of my afternoon appointment, one of my friends asked by text if she could tell me something she thought was funny but didn’t want me to get mad over? Uh oh. When they preface it with “but don’t get mad”, you know it’s going to be a doozy of a comment.

“Gustave (one of her co-workers whose name I’ve changed) asked what was wrong with you? He said he didn’t know you were sick. He’s been praying for you.” She gave no other explanation.

I could hear her laughter from twelve miles away. It took me seconds to sort the files in my brain as to what he could possibly be talking about. And then I suddenly knew:

“Tell him I’ll know by 3 o’clock this afternoon if his prayers are answered!”

Yes, Gustave, I appreciate your prayers and concern.

No further encouragement is necessary to embrace this gray. Happy New Year!

Header Photo by Keren Perez on Unsplash