My great-grandfather had snow white hair. My grandmother and her siblings all inherited this trait and also had snow white hair. My mother? You guessed it...snow white hair. And of course, I inherited this same trait. I started finding white hairs in my early twenties, colored my hair for years, and few years ago when the dye wouldn't stick (seriously, it was a waste of money and time) gave up and just let nature have her way. We don't get gray, we get white or silver, so it really isn't as bad as it sounds. (Think of country star Emmylou Harris and you get an idea as to the color).
So anyhow, I'm walking around the room today during one of my larger and more challenging classes, keeping an eye on things and helping kids now and then with their cell coloring and labeling sheets. One of my girls, who really isn't much of a talker, raises her hand so I head over to her table to see what she needs.
"Can I ask you a question?" my Quiet Girl says.
"Of course," I tell her, thinking we're going to have a conversation about nuclei, or mitochondrion or something.
"Do you color your hair?" she asks. The other kids at the table are all silent, staring at me with wide eyes.
I laughed. "No, actually I don't. I used to a while ago, but I just gave up on it a few years ago," I say.
"Well," she says very seriously. "You really wear it well." The rest of her tablemates are nodding in agreement.
"Well thank you," I told her. "That's a really wonderful thing to say."
I had to laugh. That was just the funniest phrase to come out of a seventh grader's mouth that I've heard in a long time. It sounded like something someone of my generation would say, not a twelve year old! And honestly, it was pretty sweet.
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2 comments:
I am envious of beautiful white hair. My gray is not pretty, nor even. My hairdresser puts a mean red on it, though, and I get stopped quite often by people wanting to know what I use, as in brand name. Sorry to disappoint, but it's something my hairdresser mixes up. The students always loved it. Seems like kids notice our hair color even more than adults do.
I am going that road myself. I started coloring it at 14, and here I am 33... needing to color it every 6 weeks or so because there's such a difference between my dark brown. For me, it's not just a color change, it's a change in texture from thin and limp to very wiry, and some hairs are not taking the color any more.
I've been wondering when and how to give it up, how to tell "it's enough."
But somewhere around 6th/7th grade I started admiring the beautiful women in the Macys ads with white hair and great skin. Too bad about my skin!
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