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

