My mother reclines on the sofa, her salt and pepper hair dangling over the armrest. An afternoon soap opera drones in the background, my oversized kindergarten backpack hangs in the closet, and I set up the supplies to play hairdresser: a glass of water, a tortoiseshell barrette, a large claw clip with gold springs, and a black, wide-toothed comb.
Before I begin styling, my mother makes a casual request: “You can pull out the grey ones if you want.”
I pause. Pull out her grey hairs? Why would I want to do that?
“Grey hair makes you look old, you know,” she continues.
I nod and pick up the comb. I didn’t know.
Combing through my mother’s hair, I notice how her grey hairs grow in number as I move the comb closer to her temples and then how they fade back to brown at the nape of her neck. I shrink under the weight of both knowing she doesn’t like the grey and remembering the times she implies my brother and I are responsible for its presence.
Grasping a coarse white strand and twisting it around my fingers, I feel the tension in her scalp as I pull, and then it is lying limp in my hands. Turning the lifeless follicle over in my palm, I hesitate before plucking another, and then I pretend not to notice any new ones for a while.
A tiny pile of tangled silver grows beside my makeshift hairdressing station.
Dipping the comb in the cool water, I leave a trail of droplets on the wood floor of my childhood apartment in the space between me and my mother’s silver strands.
I measure the years by how fast the grey at my mother’s temples overtakes the brown at the nape of her neck. I watch her swallow tears when a family friend suggests her grey hair makes her look older than her much older sister. I recoil when a cousin sees me notice her grey roots and suggests she has to dye her hair so her kids are not embarrassed by how old she looks. I scrutinize television commercials telling the stories of greying women finding something akin to salvation in boxes of hair color from the pharmacy.
I catch myself, standing in front of the mirror, searching my own head for grey hairs. A fear of grey hair is cemented beneath my scalp, even though I never gave it permission to live there, even though I still don’t understand why I’m supposed to be afraid.
***
I find my first grey hair at age 20, still barely more than a child and not ready to look old.
So, as if I’m right back in my childhood apartment trying to keep my mother from looking old, I am twisting my own silver strand around my fingers, plucking it out, and tossing it in the trash. Grey hair makes you look old, you know.
This first grey hair is hardly the last. The melanin in my hair fades, strand by strand and more of my grey hairs meet their fate twisted around my fingertips. I get married and earned a second university degree along with a little more silver. I have a baby and then a second baby, and my silver strands organize themselves in a distinctive streak on the right side of my forehead–an announcement to the world that I have now lived a little.
Against my wishes, I share my mother’s fears. Too embarrassed to begin a hair dye journey that would leave me with grey roots before age 30, I stand in front of the bathroom mirror with a pair of tweezers. Pluck. Pluck. Pluck.
This quells the grey for a while, but when I am 30 years old and pregnant with my third baby a few years later, my grey streak grows back faster than I can wrench it from my scalp. Unable to hide it anymore and a little worried about a bald patch, I retire the tweezers and decide to find out how old I really look.
The streak fills in a little more every month. Soon, it stretches halfway to my ponytail, and people start noticing. I get a few compliments. Someone wants to know if I’ve dyed it grey. My husband sets my Netflix profile picture to Marvel’s Rogue.
No one tells me I look old. Why was I so afraid?
By the time that third baby turns three and my silver streak reaches the end of my ponytail, the world is gripped by a pandemic. Greying hair doesn’t appear on the list of the most common symptoms of COVID-19, but salon appointments are on its list of casualties. At first, my country bakes bread and embraces loungewear–most of our grey roots are still hidden beneath our scalps. We are optimistic, positive, and maybe even united.
A few weeks into calendars covered in Xs where salon appointments used to appear, our scalps are bursting with grey. Since I embraced my grey streak long before the salons closed, I claim immunity to this wave of grey roots. But another collection of silver strands is beginning to multiply on the other side of my forehead. I am not immune.
With a sigh of defeat, I find myself standing in front of the bathroom mirror again, tweezers in hand again, tossing silver strands in the trash again like I am trying to keep my mother from looking old like I am trying to keep my 20-year-old self from looking old.
After a wave of grey roots, another wave of grey hits too: parents juggling work and online school are tired, mental health crises deepen, resilience wanes, injustices intensify, people are dying and disagreeing and not so positive or optimistic or unified anymore. The spaces between us are growing. The world is grey and weary, just like my scalp.
I’m greying in other unwelcome ways too. My hopelessness when weeks of lockdown drag into months. The sharp angry words I hurl at my children. Contempt for the family members who are navigating the pandemic differently than I am. Jealousy over the highlight reels of those who seem to be doing just fine. The biases I carry, tucked in my pocket with my bottle of hand sanitizer.
The weight of the pandemic is eroding my ability to hide both my new grey streak and the sharp edges of myself. I begin to see the grey as just another facet of my humanity, and I wonder if we are even more afraid of looking human than we are of looking old.
***
My children are trying to make sense of the pandemic too, of humanity’s brokenness, and of God’s grace. We talk about the difficult, messy, grey, and weary things. We talk about how this season is hard and how we’re all making mistakes and how our little family is in this together, loving each other even when we bump into each other’s rough edges. We shrink the spaces between us. I consider embracing my second grey streak.
They ask why my hair is turning white and we talk about aging. We talk about melanin and genetics, silver crowns, and how fun it would be to have purple hair. They want to know if their hair will one day look like mine, and I tell them it will. They want to know if I will dye it, and I tell them I won’t but that they can dye theirs when they’re older. They style my hair in ways that accentuate my silver.
They want to know if my hair will one day look like their grandmother’s. I say yes, but I leave out the part about how it won’t feel like hers, twisted around their fingers, lying lifeless in their palms, full of fear.
My daughters may have inherited my humanity, but I pray they haven’t inherited my fear.
The writer of this essay has chosen to remain anonymous. At She is Kindred, we hold value in sharing stories regardless of credibility or recognition. We honor the author’s voice and courage.
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