
{"id":3191,"date":"2008-08-07T07:42:24","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T15:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=3191"},"modified":"2008-08-07T07:42:24","modified_gmt":"2008-08-07T15:42:24","slug":"recently-the-fading-of-red-on-the-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/08\/07\/recently-the-fading-of-red-on-the-head\/","title":{"rendered":"Recently: The fading of red on the head"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/recently08708.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/recently08708.jpg\" alt=\"Out with the red and in with the gray. Photo by Valarie Schwartz.\" width=\"150\" height=\"113\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a><em>By <strong>Valarie Schwartz<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nMost of our life, age sneaks up on us, but sometimes it smacks us in the face. That smacked!<br \/>\nNow, turning 55 comes with a bit of a sting as the gray that I quit covering in early spring emerges on my head.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nWhen 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.<\/p>\n<p>The red suited me then as it suits me now, but as age keeps creeping up, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a greater impulse to just be me, as I am.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a process I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve discussed with friends and acquaintances, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned that deciding to go gray \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or not \u00e2\u20ac\u201d perplexes many. There has been encouragement in both directions, with gray-heads giving me the hoorah and one fellow dyer encouraging \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dye \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctil you die.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a funny thing, age. As \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the baby\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d which proved true. But for years I lived for the age out there on the horizon \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the coveted ages of 13 (teenager), 16 (licensed driver), 18 (voter) and 21 (adult) that I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wait to become.<\/p>\n<p>Clicking through each of them, the little girl inside continued to persist \u00e2\u20ac\u201d there was no feeling that the magical age had been reached \u00e2\u20ac\u201d until I was 27. Ah, the year that adulthood opened up for me; when I \u00e2\u20ac\u0153came into my own,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and when with tremulous clarity my destiny became clear: I was meant to be a writer.<\/p>\n<p>Having reached that magical age, my brain stuck there for years \u00e2\u20ac\u201d whenever someone asked my age, the first number that popped into my head was 27.<\/p>\n<p>This birthday would best be qualified as an acceptance. <\/p>\n<p>I accept that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m 55 years old. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sound so old anymore. Much of my time is spent with people far older than I am. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m young to 85, 91 and 105 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a struggle with my new zaftig body shape).<\/p>\n<p>So, dear friends, catch the quasi-redhead while you can \u00e2\u20ac\u201d it looks like come 2009 a new descriptor will be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153once redhead.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nContact Valarie Schwartz at valariekays@mac.com or 923-3746.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recently"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}