“When it comes to the color, is it gray or grey?”
There’s nothing like an obscure question during an internal dialogue to derail me from getting to the root of the problem. Pun intended.
According to the calendar—and my body—God willing, I’ll celebrate my 41st birthday in about two months. I’m doing everything I can to brace for impact. I’m upping my vitamin intake. Whisking five grams of creatine into a cold glass of water is now part of my daily morning routine. My Oura ring tracks my sleep, stress levels, heart rate and resilience. I finally took the time to research taxes and, for the first time ever, I actually understand how they work. I slather on organic beef tallow cream to moisturize every inch of my face, arms and legs… and gray hair has officially entered the chat.
Aging is inevitable. Aging—gracefully—is an investment.
“How much are you willing to pay?” I asked myself after learning both gray and grey are acceptable spellings for the color commonly used to describe the in between.
The journalist in me always starts with facts.
I love a good refresh. Over the years I’ve ping-ponged from blonde to brunette. Chunky highlights. Lowlights. Bangs. Grow it long. Chop it off. At one point, I swear photographers would quietly laugh that I looked like a member of BTS, a Korean Pop band.
But over the last couple of years, I have focused on coloring the gray hair that would sprout from my roots.
At the hair salon, I pony up $80 every 12 weeks to hide the gray. There are 52 weeks in a year, which divides into four visits to my hair guru annually. Factor in the tip, and for color alone, I pay about $400 a year to blur reality. At 38, that made sense. But I’m wiser now and little more prudent. For fun, let’s tackle another math problem: if I color my hair from now until I’m 60, multiply $400 by 20 and you get $8,000.
Next, I consider reality.
The reality is, at some point, I’m going to have to embrace the gray. So the next question is: how long do I want to live in the grey zone?
Follow my train of thought: I’m single and looking. Does hiding my gray improve my odds? Does gray hair really age me? Will aging hold me back from fully living my life? Am I afraid of aging?
There it is—like a pesky sliver of gray shooting out from my sea of dark brown—the heart of the matter. Aging.
Acknowledging age is so weird sometimes, isn’t it? We say such interesting things in some bizarre verbal dance to be nice… especially to women. Oh, you’re celebrating your 21st birthday today? (when we’re obviously not). People will tell my 68-year old mom that she looks like my sister. Okay. I’ll hear female friends describe themselves as old at 35 or 40 or 50. Fine. But don’t you dare clump me in with your inaccurate description. Or, as a birthday approaches, I’ll hear someone say, I don’t want to turn a year older. Don’t remind me.
On the other hand, I follow this hilarious and sassy 95-year-old woman on Instagram. She is so proud to be 95. I’m so proud she’s 95. She reminds me that, potentially, I could have 55 more years of life to live and have a pizza party to celebrate another year well-lived. How awesome would that be?
Oxford defines “awesome” as extremely impressive or daunting; something that inspires admiration, apprehension or fear.
Aging is awesome. It can be scary, because the only thing that truly stops aging… is death.
Some of the saddest moments of my journalism career involved death. Death of grandparents, parents or children. Death caused by disease, disaster or dysfunction in the world.
I’ll never forget the first time I cut in to regular programming. It was a weekend night. I was reporting in Odessa, Texas. I was 23, a year out of college, and I had to tell our viewers that three Odessa police officers—Cpl. Abel Marquez, Cpl. Scott Gardner and Cpl. Arlie Jones Jr.—were killed in an ambush. I will never forget weeping for those officers, their families and our community alone in the privacy of my one-bedroom apartment.
Reporting on the death of a child—or children, in the case of mass shootings—is something I truly believe changed me at the cellular level. It’s not normal to knock on a stranger’s door and ask for photos and personal details of a murder victim. In doing my job, I devoted my full attention to listening to parents reflect on who their children were and the dreams they had for their futures. Those parents would have given anything, sacrificed everything, just so their children could age and blossom for decades to come—maybe even reaching the impressive age of 95. I’ve watched people struggle with their faith as they questioned God about death and why they just couldn’t get one more day, one more year with the people who colored their world in the most beautiful ways. When death, especially unexpected death, is at the doorstep I’ve come to learn that most people want nothing more than the life and experiences, memories and moments that can only come with aging.
Life is precious.
Aging is a gift.
Aging gracefully, is a choice.
So I’m choosing to move out of the grey and embrace my gray. While reading this, you may think, “Melissa, hair is so superficial. No biggie.” But to choose to invest within is counter-culture in a world that spotlights, advertises and monetizes our extreme efforts to reverse aging. A feel a bit of freedom in my choice; wisdom in it. And at the very least, I’ll pocket $400 over the next 12 months.
And to the reader who does not want to embrace the gray. Beautiful. Our lives are uniquely our own. I’ve got your back as you navigate your world in your own authentic way.
Aging is inevitable. Aging—gracefully—is an investment. But more than a financial decision, it’s a spiritual one: a reminder to take stock of life’s beauty, the fleeting time we have on this planet and the celebration that comes with the annual blowing out of candles, surrounded by the people who matter most. A certain hair color not required.
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