Should I Go Gray?

(This story was originally published in Crow's Feet, a Medium publication.)

When I look in the mirror I see me. I recognize the familiar oval shape of my face; my Dad’s big dark brown eyes (alas, along with his characteristic deep circles beneath); my mother’s mouth; my fairly nondescript nose, the bump visible only in profile; my family’s pale but slightly olive-tone skin. And I recognize my medium-brown hair.

My parents both had jet black hair, but my sisters and I all got very dark brown. When I started coloring my hair in my mid-fifties, I initially went with my natural dark brown. I’ve chosen to go a bit lighter through the years. Still, the overall look in the mirror is dark brown.

One by one, most of my women friends and my older sister have decided to let their hair go gray in their sixties and seventies. Philosophically, I am in complete agreement.

Also, it looks good on most of them. A few are a decade younger than I am and look great with long, actually white, hair. And many of my friends were going to gray from blonde or light brown hair at that point, so the changed look was not stark.

For me, it would be a big deal. Unlike many women, I’ve never experimented with other hair color shades, not even reddish brown. The face of the “me” I’ve been seeing in the mirror for 75 years has always been framed by dark brown.

When my daughter went away to college, about midway through her first year she decided to shave off her thick, naturally jet-black hair. (She got that hair color from my husband.). My daughter wasn’t following a style or making a statement. As she explained it, she did it out of curiosity to see how people’s perceptions of her —and her own of herself—might change.

That took a lot of guts even at 18. I’ve never had that kind of guts. (Even so, my husband and I both hated seeing her bald.)

Notice that I’ve gotten this far without ever using the words old, older or aging. I’m getting to that….

I’m often told that I look about ten years younger than I am. I don’t consciously try to, with make-up or clothing—and definitely not Botox. (My sister and I inherited my father’s mostly wrinkle-free skin. When he turned 90 the women in his new assisted-living residence thought he was turning 80.)

I remember being sad when my mother stopped coloring her hair in her seventies. The gray made her look so much older in general but also because her long-fragile health was declining and the gray hair just made that all the more clear.

Obviously, even though I’m healthy, I’d look a lot older with gray hair. And I won’t deny that I’m vain enough to worry that I won’t look as good with gray hair. But, as I said, that’s truly not the main reason for my hesitation. It’s that I won’t look like me.

Is that what everyone says? Am I just kidding myself?

Maybe.

But for now, I’m sticking with the me I grew up with—and yes, the one I’m growing old with—at least for a while.

Carol Offen is a living kidney donor, donation advocate, and writer and editor living in North Carolina.