Solidarity

Several months ago my mother decided it was time to let her hair go grey. Twenty-five years of covering her silver roots and she was sick, literally sick, from the hair color and the migraines and scalp shingles that would occur as a result. She had flirted with the idea of going grey for years, asking my siblings and I if we would mind.

"I'll look older," she said. "I'll look different and older and if that bothers you I won't do it."

"Of course you should do it," I said! "You'll be beautiful grey. A silver Fox. Rarrrrhotstuffrrrr."

It wasn't until this winter when she finally made the decision to go for it, reluctantly, self consciously, go for it.

"My friends keep asking me why," she said to me a few weeks back, her grey roots then about an inch thick. "I feel like a skunk."

"Sexiest skunk I've ever seen," I said.

My mother seemed unconvinced and I annoyed that she could possibly doubt her beauty, she who is the most luminous woman on earth, so I came up with an assignment for her, a book to write about her year Going Grey. A book to empower herself and women like her to be real, to embrace age with grace and dignity.

She began work on it right away.

...

Two days ago I found my first grey hair sticking out of the top of my head, silver and jagged as a pube. I plucked it out, examined it and shrieked.

"Mom! Mom! Mom! Guess what just happened!" I said to her over the phone.

"What! What! What!"

"I found my first grey hair!"

"Uh oh."

"Dude! Not uh oh. Amazing. My hair is totally standing behind your hair. It's solidarity! My hair is supporting your cause!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

I could hear my mom smiling over the phone.

Fable's dress made by my mother and me

GGC

And in other news... Macaroni and Cheese is a complete balanced meal, and my brother goes to Harvard.