Gray Hair, No Hair and Widows Shopping

 

Okay, it’s official. They’ve got me brainwashed. I’m not old I’m just entering a new phase of life called elderhood. Old is now a four letter swear word---unless we’re talking about fine wine and high quality, aged meat. I’ve already started the process of being ‘elder and proud of it’ with the decision not to do low-lights in my hair anymore. Last week I had my four inch long hair all chopped off to pixie length and by the next hair cut or two all the darker tones will be gone. It’s not like I’m giving up a long standing habit, though, so no applause, please. I started the low-lights as part of the widow-finding-herself make-over that we each seem to go through at some point in the grieving process. I’d never colored my hair before that and who would have ever guessed I’d be looking at gray-haired women with wistful thoughts, thinking I, too, could have pretty silver hair like hers. We shall see. Six months from now I might be back to low-lights. The real reason I made the decision, though, was because I couldn’t stand the way my colored-treated hair felt---soft and limpy. All my life I had course hair, thanks to my Italian heritage, and I’m inept at dealing with soft hair. Old---oops---elderly dogs can’t learn new tricks in this household.

According to The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology there is a cure for gray hair just over the horizon, a discovery that scientists made while working on a treatment for vitiligo, a condition that causes patchy pigmentation in skin. Great. Just about the time the movement to make old be cool gets into full swing they will have a cream ready to market that will actually restore your natural color hair, not just cover up the gray.

While I’m on the subject of hair, Saturday I had breakfast with Red Hat Society members---six of us in all. While five of us sat at the table with our hats on the whole time, one woman took hers off the minute she sat down and she is as bald as a proverbial billiard ball. She’s had ovarian cancer for four years and is at the end of any treatments they can give her and at best, she’s got until mid-summer before the cancer finally wins. She will proudly tell you that she’s not FIGHTING cancer, she’s LIVING with it. And from what I’ve seen of her at Red Hat events, she knows how to party hard. When she’s absence from a Red Hat tea others in the chapter say she is their hero for the way she is handling her illness. At breakfast we had the most surreal laugh-fest talking about funerals and cremations versus burials and she started it by telling us what to expect when her time comes. (Hint: She's calling it a party.) Young people sitting near-by in the busy restaurant probably thought we were a weird cult, talking about having husbands made into diamond rings and lockets and feeding their ashes to the crabs down in the Florida Keys.

After breakfast we dropped the bald-headed lady back home and headed downtown with plans to see the dinosaur exhibit or as one woman put it, to see the pets we used to have when we were kids. But after waiting in line for a few minutes and hearing how long it would take just to get inside the first set of doors we decided to go on a thrift shop crawl instead. Having been a fan of the Advanced Style blog for a few months and learning that a lot of the ‘elderly’ women there shop the thrift stores I was excited about the idea of a crawl. I’ve never bought used clothing before and as we shopped I kept saying, “I can’t believe how cheap this is!” Every place we shopped at had tags with three prices on them plus dates when the mark-down prices would take effect. What a clever way to keep customers coming back. And now I understand how some of those women at Advanced Style can put together such arty-farty outfits without breaking the bank. I bought an L.L. Bean vest in hot pink for $6.50 and it was just like a black one I’d bought online last fall for $49.95! I would never paid $49.95 for a vest that wasn’t in a neutral color so I was a happy shopper. Normally I dislike shopping with other women because years ago I kept getting talked into purchases I later regretted. Always the people pleaser back in those days, I couldn’t say no. Apparently thrift shop crawls is something this chapter likes to do a couple of times a year so shopping in groups might be returning to my life.

Next week I have two lectures lined up to attend---one with a rather bizarre topic, Also on my calendar is a Red Hat tea and my Movie and Lunch Club. Life here in the still snow covered north is starting to wind back up.  ©