It starts with a grey hair
BEING confronted with the unavoidable truth that you are ageing can be difficult.
There are different ways that moment can manifest.
For many people, it is the moment when that first grey hair arrives on their head.
More often than not, that moment happens in your 30s.
It’s followed shortly thereafter by clusters of grey hair around the temples.
You stop colouring your hair for regrowth and start colouring your hair to hide the greys.
The length of time between hair appointments then starts to shrink, as the white or grey stripe (aka the zebra look), becomes prominent after four or five weeks.
Genetics plays a strong part in the moment that ageing confronts you.
As legend has it, my paternal grandmother was completely grey by 29. Brave and lacking in conformity, she never coloured her hair and enjoyed the freedom that her gorgeous salt and pepper locks provided.
While Gran was never beholden to a four-week zebra prevention schedule, her genetic legacy also meant that my siblings and I never reached our 40s before seeing a grey hair.
In truth, our 20s were the decade in which the inevitable truth that we were ageing confronted us all. If it’s not the grey hair on your head that reveals this, it may be the grey hair somewhere else that confronts you.
In one of his famous comedy skits, Billy Connolly talks about being in his 30s and luxuriating in the bath when he spies his first grey hair . . . down there.
He says it elicited panic in his soul because he knew instantly he was getting older.
He complains that nobody told him about ageing presenting itself that way. The skit is hilarious, but he assures us that the reality was not so amusing.
A sign of ageing that has confronted me and many of my friends, colleagues and family this year has been the need for reading glasses to help us read small print — or even large print — in dim light.
Our reactions to this have been varied but distinct.
I recall my father needing glasses in his mid-40s. He took the path of denial.
As a 15-year-old I clearly remember months and months of Dad asking me to read instructions on tablets, vitamins, appliances and asking me to read menus for him at restaurants.
He had to ask me for assistance as my mother, fed up with what she regarded as pure vanity, had refused to assist him any longer, or lend him her reading glasses, which she had obtained without fuss.
Contrary to Dad’s experience, Mum had recognised that she needed reading glasses, had her eyes tested and then purchased appropriate frames and lenses. And the job was done.
Close friends have refused to have their eyes tested until they had been to several eyewear shops and had tried on dozens of pairs of glasses to find a pair that, in their view, improved rather than detracted from their looks.
They also had to be sufficiently cool that they could reassure themselves that they were not getting older, simply trying out a new and improved “look”.
Colleagues have been no less determined to deny the admission of ageing eyes.
None of us had confessed to each other our need for glasses until, at court recently, we were all caught out by the dim light.
We needed to take detailed and accurate notes of the evidence that was being given and, one by one, we all pulled out our glasses and avoided eye contact.
Eventually we met each other’s gaze and, although not a word was said, a raise of the eyebrows and a nod of the head was enough to acknowledge that we were all getting older and had taken that additional step into middle age.
Whether denial is your style, or you are approaching ageing with grace and maturity, it is inevitable. If there’s any comfort in it, it’s the fact that none of us are immune to it so whether we like it or not, we’re all in it together. Rachel Schutze is a principal of Maurice Blackburn, wife and mother of three. [Ed’s note: Ms Schutze is married to Corio MP Richard Marles.]