True Roots

 For the first time in my life, I have roots.  In my hair.  And they are grey.

I’ve always been just a little bit prideful about my hair.  My tilted nose like a ski-jump got me lots of teasing in school and my skin had acne and I never learned to apply makeup.

But I like my hair. Even when I kept on blow drying it and trying to tame its frizzes all through high school until I got to college and met this amazing girl who introduced me to gel and mousse and how to deal with natural curlies, and that’s when I really started to like it.

Then I had kids.  Now it’s falling out.  Insanely.  Like handfuls on the shower wall (gross!) insanely falling out.  That’s the post-partum thing I know.  And it’s growing in a bit at my hairline, but that’s almost worst.

Almost, but not as bad as they grey.

My roots are turning grey.  How can that be for a girl who has never even been colored, never been permed, never been anything other than a pair of scissors every so often?

It’s kinky, steely, thick grey sprouting up between brown waves and distinguishing itself along my part.  I’m confounded and vain and tired.

Then I remember my grandmother who passed when I was merely ten, barely older than my oldest daughter.  The grandmother we called Grandmommy-White-Hair whose heritage gives me lowcountry roots and a love of homemaking and fried chicken.

I wonder if she had a crisis of identity when her roots turned grey?