How I learned to embrace the gray

I found my first gray hair when I was 26.

I leaned into the mirror and studied the single strand bright against my dark hair — and then I unceremoniously plucked out.

“Oh, no, no, NO,” I said as I stepped on the lever that opens the trashcan and dropped it in. I was too young for this.

Not even my mother had gray hair yet. My dad, on the other hand, was saltand-pepper in his 30s and mostly all white by the time he was 40.

I would just pretend I had never seen it. I let the trash can lid slam shut.

But then there was another, and another. They were like dandelions, popping up overnight. They screamed from my hairline, “Your youth is OVER!” I had to stop it. I picked up the phone and called my hairstylist to make an appointment to color my hair.

I was already getting the occasional highlights, Golden Wheat strands woven into my dark hair in the summer and threads of Rich Auburn in the fall.

I imagined a Golden Mahogany, Havana Brown or Espresso. But it took the dull-sounding but devoutly solid Medium Brown to cover over those white strands that first time.

Over the years, it would take me, an army of hairstylists, professional-grade chemical attacks, late-night runs to the drug store and do-it-yourself panicked assaults to keep them at bay.

Because my hair would fight back, the white strands standing straight up from my scalp, wiry and crooked, insisting on being noticed.

Which was fine, in the beginning, when there weren’t so many of them.

Hair isn’t there just to cover our heads

Our hair tells a lot about us. We check babies for it the instant they’re born, peach fuzz or a dark shock