Are you prepared?
A fellow blogger recently lost her hair because she had chemo and the growing back of it became an adventure. I was born with the grace of thick and abundant hair (thank you mom) and I have always spent a lot of time obsessing over it – getting the color right, getting the cut and length right, and getting it done right. When my mother hit 70 she started losing her hair, in clumps, and it got thinner and thinner. Luckily, she had too much hair, if there is such a thing, and her thinning hair at 70 was what most women have at 30. What I wasn’t prepared for having now gone through menopause is the change. The change in my hair. My hair resembles nothing of its former self. It is coarse in texture. My new natural color, dark, has never been the color of hair in my life. My hair is still abundant but now unruly. It is someone else’s hair, not mine.
It is my 52 year old hair and frankly I’m sick of the whole hair conversation. I’m sick of spending money to get my hair just right. I’m sick of people commenting on my hair – I like it this way, I liked it that way. I’m sick of my hair.
A friend of mine shaves her head and she looks great. She has her husband use clippers to get it all the way down to the nub. She has a might fine head. I’m not that brave.
My hair is short short short again, much like I wore it in my early 20s and you’d think that is easy, but even this short, it does not seem like my hair, it is my 52 year old hair, this coarse, unruly, dark hair that is sitting on top of my wrinkled saggy 52 year old face, that is topping the 12 pounds too heavy 52 year old body because I can’t lose the menopausal thickness, that is all resting on the 52 year old feet that have lost their padding and causes me to walk almost on tip toes when I get up in the morning to pee.
It’s not the whoosh of old age arriving, it is the slow decline that is glaring and discomforting.
July 5th, 2011 at 11:20 am
Isn’t aging FUN? I’m glad to say after my mother’s long bout with cancer that her hair is growing back gloriously, and I’m so happy for that. She’s of the old school, once a week to the beauty parlor and in the day a “comb out” and set for any big event, so I know its important to her.
I just wish my very thin, remaining hair grew like my toenails (I know, TMI).
July 5th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
I’m just wishing I could afford the once a week blow dry’s I used to indulge in – $25 to get my hair done and it would keep nice for a week because I have thick as fur hair and dry as dust. I cut it all off because I can’t handle the upkeep. When did hair get to be so damn important is what I want to know.