Grays and Granny

I pretty much only remember my grandmother with gray hair. She went gray at a fairly young age, and never (as far as I know) felt the need to do the dye thing. And as far as I'm concerned, she rocked the gray hair.

So my gray-covering maneuver -- my first hair dye experience that has been about something more than exploring life as a quasi-redhead -- is in no way meant to as a diss on her and others who wore their grays with pride. It should instead be seen as a sign of my own personal vanity as 40 approaches and I must cope with no longer being "the young one." The greatest compliment I could receive would be that no one notices this particular dye job. I want no one to notice the absence of grays, which were not really that present to begin with. (But present enough.)

It's funny, though -- the picture of me with my hair wet with dye looks so much like her. Or so much as I imagine her to have looked as a young woman in the late '30s and early '40s. I have just a few pictures, most of them formal and most black and white. In them, and in this picture of me, I see something familiar in the point of our square jawlines and something about the eyes. I will probably see this more and more as I age and draw closer to the older woman imprinted on my memory (not the young woman in blurry pictures). I do plan to embrace the gray as grannyhood approaches. I think it will be kind of fun. But I'm not there yet. I think Granny would understand.