A Serious Conversation

8:15 on a Tuesday night.

The toddler is sleeping.

I head downstairs where Craig is laid out on the couch.

I mute the television and turn to face him saying, "we need to have a serious conversation."

He squirms and sits up straighter. "Um....okay?"

I scoot his leg off the couch and take a seat next to him while looking him squarely in the eye. "I have something to tell you. It's going to affect our budget."

More squirming while a nervous smile curls on his lips.

"I found a few gray hairs and pretty soon I'll have to start dyeing my hair. This could get expensive."

Then he had the nerve to laugh in my face.

But it's true. They're sprouting at record pace and I'm well on my way to becoming besties with Loreal and Clairol.

This is disturbing on many levels.

When I was growing up my mother's mantra regarding hair dye was.....this is the color God gave you, you don't think God's decision was good enough?

Nothing like a little Catholic guilt to keep you out of the hair salon.

But all it took for me to renounce the "work of God" was one bad break-up and I found myself at 23 sitting in the hairstylists chair saying, "cut it short and dye it black."

My mother does not have any pictures up in her house of me from this era.

Except for this brief dabble on the dark side, my hair has remained untreated and chemical-free. I wash, blow-dry and run a quick straightener through it....but only visit the salon every six months (or less).

I started life with a mass of black hair of which my mother was so proud....finally a child with hair to match her own.



My mother and her virgin-never-been-colored curly-ish black locks.

But her visions of a dark-headed little girl were ruined when my hair fell out, I was bald for two years and then THIS happened:



A strawberry blonde (and very serious) toddler.

Over time my hair darkened and by middle school I was a full-on brunette....except not quite.
In his youth, my daddy had that same strawberry blonde hair....an off-shoot from his auburn haired mother, I suppose. My dad doesn't talk about his mother much - I didn't know her all that well and the focus in my family tends to center around the generations of women on my mother's side. But he did tell me something one time that stuck with me - my hair reminds my dad of his mother's. On the surface a regular brunette but in the sun glittering full of natural gold and red streaks.




Perhaps because of this I stopped coloring my hair and just started relying on what God and genetics have gifted me with. I've got a thick horse mane of hair that straightens easily which, according to my 13 year old athletes is SUPER important.

So why mess with a good thing?

Why dye?!

I'm not afraid of getting older. In fact its quite the opposite - I'm excited about turning thirty later this year!

But the silver strands I found bother me.

But so does the idea of coloring my hair.

Conundrum.


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