Last week I sat at the hair salon waiting for my next Mane Miracle (surely it would happen this time), and found myself humming “The Old Grey Mare.” I was game for singing all the lyrics but “ain’t what she used to be” was about the limit of my recall. As it turns out, apart from kicking a whiffletree (not, to my surprise, a botanical species) that’s pretty much the song in its entirety anyhow.
The Mane Miracle I sought, I am chagrined to admit, was how to undo the years of dyeing my hair and allow my natural grey to grow out without looking like I was engaging in the hair equivalent of the Maginot Line, a grey bunker fortifying the roots where I part my hair. Could you dye my hair brown and just give me some grey highlights?, I plaintively asked my hairdresser (giggling to myself as I recalled Mitch Hedberg’s having said, “I got my hair highlighted, because I felt some strands were more important than others”). Or should I just shave my head entirely and start all over again? Then again, do I really want to be as grey as (only god and my DNA knows) I am?
Alright. So go ahead, ask. What’s with this?, you want to know. I who write so blithely about “saging well” nonetheless feel the compulsion to disguise the process? Is it really defensible to embrace aging, but not the appearance of it?
Good questions. Ones I ask myself every time I make the appointment with my hairdresser. I simply don’t have a good answer, apart from the fact that once I started this dyeing business twenty-five years ago there was no turning back (no problem turning black, however). It’s not because of any pressure from anyone in my life. I do believe that no one would love me less if I were grey. But if I’m really honest with myself, the fact is I’m not ready to take that chance. And I’m not entirely certain I wouldn’t love myself a little less if I were au naturel.
Well, like so much of life, it turns out there’s more to the Old Grey Mare than I thought. When I Googled that phrase I discovered in Merry Olde England she is not simply the nattering neglected nag that testy timeworn tune suggests, but has, as pictured above, been commemorated since 1742 as the Westbury White Horse on Salisbury Plain. Wikipedia suggests it was a “heraldic symbol associated with the House of Hanover” (making any link between the folksy American Old Grey Mare and the Westbury White Horse about as strong as a paper chain, actually).
Nonetheless I realized their unlikely contrast symbolizes my current state of the union with regard to my so-called crowning glory. I’m not ready to stop dyeing until I can truly exhilarate in a virile head of white hair. I want to wait until I can be the Westbury Horse rather than the Old Grey Mare.
That may not occur, of course, until I’m near eighty. In the meantime, I look in the mirror at my youthfully restored hair and laugh, in my mind hearing Prince’s signature, “I Would Dye 4 U.”
At least I think that’s what he’s singing.