To gray or not to gray

That is what I keep asking myself lately.  I have not yet had to use any permanent color to hide the truth... highlighting has kept the few stray grays camouflaged, or so I thought, until my girlfriend plucked a gray hair out of my head the other night while we were talking.  I think the jig is up.

I am conflicted about what comes next.  A couple of years ago I tested the waters with my friends casually mentioning that I was thinking I would just let the grays arrive as they may without trying to hide them.  Their reaction was swift and firm--NO!   

I wondered this morning is coloring gray, to some degree, covering up the truth?  The years tick by and time marches on but I know very few women who are gray.  A childhood friend who I "see" on Facebook took the plunge a couple of years ago.  I look at her pictures and I see total truth and freedom.  Other people may look at her pictures and think she gave up and threw in the towel.

I am noticing my few strands multiplying as the days go by.   It is especially noticeable  in the car when I look in the rear view mirror.  I see what used to be a lone gray soldier has decided he needed back up and the troops are starting to arrive.

Covering gray  reminds me of the Whack-A-Mole game.  At first things are somewhat calm...it is easy to whack that mole back in the hole before another one pops up but before you know it you are whacking everywhere like crazy, anxiety coursing through you and it is almost impossible to keep up...kind of like aging.  At first a stray gray hair, then a wrinkle, then more grays and more wrinkles popping up like the moles in the game...and what does winning at Whack-A-Mole get you?  A bunch of tickets that will never be enough for the huge teddy bear...just maybe a few stale tootsie rolls.

What I am beginning to realize is it isn't hard to age, but it can be  hard to see yourself age.  My grandmother would tell me she felt 18 inside until she looked in the mirror.   I look at these pictures of my grandmothers two of them 80 and one 99 and I can see they too were a camp divided.

I think of my friends who never got the privilege to age and I wonder what they would have done.

So, as I head off to the salon,  I find myself in another gray area.  Literally.

What do you WANT to do?

A new year is kind of a like a new semester at school and we are a few weeks into January so you know what that means...  It's add/drop time!  I have decided that we all need to incorporate add/drop into our lives.  A time when we re-evalute what "classes" we are taking and really think about if we want to continue in Whatever 101.

I am trying to embrace the idea of the more things change, the more things DO NOT HAVE TO stay the same.   I have been in Book Club for years and I have loved it!  I adore the other ladies and I will miss them dearly but my heart just wasn't in it anymore.   My life is completely different than it was years ago when I joined.  I work at an office now and I do not have the same free time or flexibility I once had.   I find myself falling asleep at night trying to get through a book.   As the days tick by and the date to meet approaches I am constantly calculating how much I have to read per day in order to be finished on time...this last book was 800 pages and I was only 30 pages in with 12 days to go. Time to drop!

Tennis is another love of mine although I was off the court for years due to a neck injury.  This past spring I was asked to join a tennis group in the fall that met on Thursday nights.  My neck is better so I thought "Why not?! That will be great and I have wanted to get back on the courts." Fast forward to fall and Thursdays have become the afternoon all hell breaks loose.  Having that pressure on me stresses me out all week.  I start repeating the dreaded "what was I thinking".  And I realized that I should not be thinking of playing tennis as a HAVE TO.  Time to drop!

Some of what was keeping me stuck was my fear of what people would think.   If I left book club I might upset the other members.  I was embarrassed to admit that Thursday night tennis was not working for me after I had been so gung ho.   I know that I want my friends to find joy in what they do so I am letting myself off the hook.   This year I will honor what I REALLY want to do.

Monday late afternoon Yoga with one of my favorite teachers and down the street from where I work? Sign me up!   How about a Binge Club where we can talk about the moment that Hank realized Walt was Heisenberg or the fact that Dean Strang is dreamy.  Add it in!  Instead of getting a pit in my stomach when I look at my kindle,  I want to start a Mother-Daughter-Daughter Book Club to see what interesting views 3 generations can have on the same material.

So if it's Thursday night you will no longer find me on a tennis court. Instead you might try looking for me at a Bistro sharing Pho with my sweet senior boy who will be leaving in a few short months...or maybe steeping in the tub I swore I would use more when we replaced it last summer.

The one thing I know is it will be something I WANT to be doing.

Celebrating Epiphanies

This blog has been sitting in my laptop waiting for me to come up with the perfect first post. I realized that day may never happen and it has been waiting long enough. While this post may not be perfect, it is in perfect harmony with life.  Realizing that life is not black and white...there is a lot of gray involved. Getting used to and being at peace with the gray is my goal.

It is January 15th and I am finally leaning into the new year. There were so many years that I believed if I didn't have my act together by January 2nd all was lost. I had already failed at my commitments to move more, eat cleaner, etc...I was so lucky to get to work with the brilliant and beautiful Jen Yost who helped me to understand that January is the perfect month to rest and recharge. To reflect on the past and look forward to the future.

It has proven to be a very timely Epiphany. This year I spent time enjoying the Christmas tree a week longer while sitting with a beautiful new calendar to plan the year. This morning I was looking out my kitchen window at my favorite hydrangea and all the plants and trees in our yard. It struck me that they are resting too. In order to bring us joy all spring, summer and fall they need to take time and be still, as do we.

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I named this blog Streaked With Gray because there is always gray peaking out at us in life.  For some of us, like me, we see the streaks of gray in our hair when looking in the mirror--despite our trips to the salon.  We can also see the gray now, with the wisdom that comes with those streaks, as we are put into situations that appeared black and white when we viewed them with younger eyes.

With younger eyes I thought that if I didn't have my act together by January 15th, the year was lost and I would have to wait until next year. Through my gray streaks I now see that I am not finished for 2016, I am just getting started.