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Recently: The fading of red on the head

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Staff

Out with the red and in with the gray. Photo by Valarie Schwartz.By Valarie Schwartz

Fifteen years ago, on the date that I write this (Aug. 4), I sat in a restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with my eight-year-old son, looking at a newspaper after having ordered our breakfast. This remains a memory because it was the first time I had to adjust the length of my arm in order to read the newspaper. It was one day before I turned 40.

Most of our life, age sneaks up on us, but sometimes it smacks us in the face. That smacked!
Now, turning 55 comes with a bit of a sting as the gray that I quit covering in early spring emerges on my head.

When hair coloring started for me two decades ago, there was a little gray coming in, but mostly there was a desire to let the natural red highlights of my Irish-Scott heritage dominate. Besides, I lived in L.A., where nobody goes gray.

The red suited me then as it suits me now, but as age keeps creeping up, there’s a greater impulse to just be me, as I am.

It’s a process I’ve discussed with friends and acquaintances, and I’ve learned that deciding to go gray — or not — perplexes many. There has been encouragement in both directions, with gray-heads giving me the hoorah and one fellow dyer encouraging “dye ‘til you die.”

It’s a funny thing, age. As “the baby” in my family, with a sister and brother 10 and eight years older, respectively, it seems that my childhood was spent wishing to be older, because I was forever left out of fun things that they could do but I couldn’t because I was too young, or too little. Looking young for my age compounded the problem. As a child, whenever people registered my deflation after they guessed my age as several years younger, they would say how much I would appreciate that later on — which proved true. But for years I lived for the age out there on the horizon — the coveted ages of 13 (teenager), 16 (licensed driver), 18 (voter) and 21 (adult) that I couldn’t wait to become.

Clicking through each of them, the little girl inside continued to persist — there was no feeling that the magical age had been reached — until I was 27. Ah, the year that adulthood opened up for me; when I “came into my own,” and when with tremulous clarity my destiny became clear: I was meant to be a writer.

Having reached that magical age, my brain stuck there for years — whenever someone asked my age, the first number that popped into my head was 27.

This birthday would best be qualified as an acceptance.

I accept that I’m 55 years old. It doesn’t sound so old anymore. Much of my time is spent with people far older than I am. I’m young to 85, 91 and 105 — some of the ages I hang with. They give me a hard time about registering age complaints. As my hair grays out, I recognize it as embracing my age (though there’s still a struggle with my new zaftig body shape).

So, dear friends, catch the quasi-redhead while you can — it looks like come 2009 a new descriptor will be “once redhead.”

Contact Valarie Schwartz at valariekays@mac.com or 923-3746.

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