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?
