Getting older is, as Carl Jung reminds us, the privilege of a lifetime. It’s messy, but it’s doable. This is what I learned.
I have, for the most part, dark hair, somewhere between black and brown, like an old brown leather sofa that has, over the years, shifted colors, due to kids mostly, and now hovers on a line of the color continuum: brack. Although, my hair has grey, you would not describe me as having grey hair, not even salt and pepper. I can’t get cheap coffee at Macdonalds. I’ve tried.
The grey has lived, until today, at the temples. As such, they are smaller guys, short, stubby and fiercely attached to their home. They don’t leave without a fight and if they do leave, there is, although temporary, pain involved. They are, in many ways, like my Great Grandma: short, grey, ornery and a bit mean. I must have her hair.
My Getting Older Grey Hair
That is until today. While driving with the sunroof open, the wind shifted my manly locks and I noticed, to my horror, a tuft – that is the only word I can think of – of grey hair, not at the temples, but up front and center, what could be the nose of my hair. It was not a single hair, not even a couple. It was like a grey hair gopher colony sprang up on the way to the library. Although it covered only a small percentage – given only stop light time for calculations, my unofficial estimate is 1.7% – of my hair’s total area the number had to be north of 7 and south of 13.
I closed the sunroof and did a quick comb over, not the kind that your Uncle does to hide his bald head. There are no hairs on my head that are 10 times as long as the others. It was more of a realignment really, fixing nature’s mean spirited joke, setting right what God had intended: my brack hair.
Although I can’t be positive, I”m quite certain that no one noticed. It was a busy intersection and one of those red lights – everyone has them in their hometown – where you know, upon arrival, that you can update your latest WWF game, floss, change the Pandora station twice and respond to your boss’s 27th email of the day, my combover was so astute, the fingers light on the touch, the hair flip just so, that I was up and bracking within a matter of seconds, quite possibly a red light comb over world record. I should have instagramed that shit.
The long light, however, left me time to ponder and nowhere, for next 3:47, to go. I was a prisoner of Spring and LA Avenue. It was just me and my tuft of grey hair. There was no where to hide. I looked.
They say that, in a near death experience, your life flashes before your eyes. In a near grey experience, my life flashed forward, not backward. I didn’t long for the good old mullet days, nor the perm, not even the Bobby Sherman do. What I saw was an unknown me; it was the hair of my future: not just a tuft of grey but a shock of grey, like Albert Einstein with gel.
What I Did About Getting Older
Then, I did what any brack man would do. I opened the sun roof and started weeding. Nothing brings out the grey like a sun roof. Contrast goes up, so does texture. It’s like a grey neon sign, the arrow pointing at the offending strands, photoshop for the midlife male in need of some pruning. There, at Spring and LA, I parted the hair like one would scrape away garden dirt, found the root and pulled. It’s a satisfying feeling. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like sex, not even like digging in with a qtip and excavating ear wax, but it’s good, really good.
In life, there are times that you need to wait for good things. This is not one of them. With a functional sun roof, mediocre eyesight and average finger dexterity, you can, with no previous experience, mine a strand or two a minute. A long stop light can make a world of difference.
Of course, I’m not average. In the little known world of red light grey hair weeding, I’m Edward Scissorhands, my fingers flying across the hair like Liberace fingers flying across the keyboard, only with more testosterone, the hands, fingers, brack hair, and grey hair dancing like a choreographed routine at one of my daughter’s dance recitals, part ballet, part lyrical with just a touch of funk.
Then, the inevitable happened. The light changed. Taking the car out of neutral, a small pile of grey at my feet, I, a getting older me, headed west on LA Avenue, a few strands left, just enough to feel my future but not live it, not yet, me and my getting older grey tuft heading into the sunset.
This is the thing. Midlife is like a country western song. You might lose your home. Your ranch. Your dog. Your job. Your brack hair. You also, like a country western song, might get it back. The dog comes back. You get another job, one with better benefits. You get your brack hair back, if only for awhile. You get older but you get better.
Getting older is about change.
While Wikipedia will tell you about all the problems of getting older, there are advantages to getting older. It’s not easy. You want to hold onto what you had. That’s normal. Pulling some grey hairs is, I think, part of the process. So is keeping a few.
Whether you keep the grey hair or not, getting older is about the inside. It’s about change, leaning into an uncertain future, and creating meaning in the mayhem. That’s not easy.
Getting older is about growing into larger shoes.
It’s about losing who you were to become who you are in the service of others.
You’re not what you once were, but that’s not so bad. You’re getting older, still growing up, losing who you were to grow into something bigger, someone older, wiser and better, and yes, it’s messy, a bit disconcerting, like a pile of grey hairs in your car and a tuft still in your head.
All My Best,
Mike
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