Live and let dye

Ebony, April, 1995 by Laura B. Randolph

It was right after the third shampoo, when I was sitting there with my hair saturated in avocado conditioner, that my hairdresser said it. "Oh, my God!" Joi exclaimed, staring down at my soaking wet head.

"Oh, my God?" I asked.

"Oh, my God" is not a phrase you want your hairdresser to use even under the best of circumstances (when she is doing someone else's hair, preferably someone you do not like), let alone when you are the person sitting in her chair.

"Oh, my God what?"

"Oh, my God," Joi said, giving me a look I have not seen since a co-worker came into my office to say Wesley Snipes was on the phone for me but she had accidentally lost the call. "I found a gray hair."

If you are a woman, you know how significant this is. It doesn't matter that it is only one colorless little strand among thousands of dark and beautiful ones. Nor does it matter that you need a microscope to see it and with a snip, a pluck, or, if you are really traumatized, a five-minute henna, the little sucker will be history and only you and your hairdresser will know for sure.

A gray hair is like a cockroach: there is no such thing as just one. Soon enough, you know, that one little hair will be two, and then five and then before you know it, the natural henna will no longer work its magic and you will have two choices regarding your once-dark-and-lovely-now-streaked-with-gray hair: live with it or dye.

That day, I had the henna rinse--a double--and when I got home that night I had another double. This one was for my head, not my hair. Straight. No chaser.

I know what you're thinking. I over-reacted. Big time. Well, I didn't. I really didn't. Let me say in my defense, in fact, that my reaction was not completely of my own doing. As any woman over 30 can tell you, we live in a society so obsessed with youth that it tells women every day in thousands of ways, both large and small, that if they are not young (read: 22), they are not beautiful, not sexy, not desirable. And there is nothing like your first gray hair to remind you that you are no longer 22.

At 22, you can dance the night away and show up at work the next morning looking as if you were tucked in by 10 p.m.

At 22, you can start getting ready for a date 15 minutes before he's scheduled to arrive and look as if you spent the two hours you now devote to hair and makeup to go anywhere other than the gas station or the grocery store.

And let's not even get into the metabolism thing. At 22, you can eat a box of Ring Dings for dinner (I have done this), go straight to bed and, the next morning, still fit into your skinniest pair of jeans.

I knew those days were gone forever when, a week after The Gray Hair Incident, I found myself wandering down the diet food aisle of the supermarket in full makeup.

At 22, however, you are also pretty naive about life. It's not your fault, of course. You just haven't lived enough of it to know what's important and what's not.

The legendary cover girl Lauren Hutton, a woman I believe knows a thing or three about the value of a pretty young face, said one of the wisest things I have ever heard on this subject. It was two years ago, when she was turning 50, and everybody was asking her how it felt to be a role model instead of a supermodel: "Who wants to be 20?" she said. "You don't know anything."

She's right, of course. When you reach your 30s, however, all that changes. Once you pass 30, you become beautiful in a way no 22-year-old ever could be because, as Hutton intimated, you are a woman with a past. In other words, you are a woman who knows things--important things--about life, things that change the way you live it.

Once you reach 30 you know that:

* a broken heart will mend but a broken spirit won't

* just because you're alone doesn't mean you're lonely

* what is good to you, isn't always good for you

* for a woman's life to be fulfilling it doesn't have to be exhausting

* a man who tells you he isn't good enough for you is always, without exception, right

* every relative isn't family and every buddy isn't a friend

* all that glitters isn't gold but you should always have it appraised just to be sure

* when it comes to love, time and money, you should always save a little for yourself

* the best things in life are free but there are some things you're going to want which you will have to pay cash for

* sometimes its better to be lucky than good

* pretty may get you in the door but only smart will keep you there

* family is always first; they don't read your resume at your funeral

* beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder, it is not necessarily even physical

* you are your own best friend.

There was a line in the movie The Natural which I never forgot: "We all get two lives. The one we learn with, and the one we live with after that."

With this recent rite of passage, I have a new appreciation for its meaning, one I couldn't have had in my 20s. The time I spent then was learning how to live the life I'm living now. A gray hair is just a marker of wisdom and experience along the journey of life--a tangible sign that I will never again be 20. Nor will I ever want to be.