Greyness- A Thanksgiving Post

The husband is going grey at an alarming rate. He thinks he looks “distinguished” or some such malarkey.

The initial onset came during his third year in law school- he was running the law review, studying for the bar exam, taking classes, and juggling both a baby who screamed from 4pm to 2am daily and a wife whose postpartum depression made her most unlovable.

After a bit of research, I was shocked to learn that stress has not been biologically linked to the onset of grey hair. I’ve always been intrigued by the possibility that a sudden trauma could turn just a part of a person’s hair snow white- like that girl in the X-Men. (My brother-in-law has a white patch of hair. I always assumed he was abducted by aliens and returned to earth thoroughly traumatized with a newly obtained white streak of hair. This would also explain why he is the way he is.) However, there is no concrete evidence that stress actually makes a person’s hair go grey, or that trauma can turn a streak of hair white. The white streaks are actually indicative of something called poliosis- a weird melanin thing. (I still submit that it seems highly coincidental that John’s hair went through such a marked change during the aforementioned period of time.)

For the sake of consistency, let’s pretend stress does make one’s hair go grey faster than genetically preordained. John’s hair is getting worse, and he has made it clear he will never cover up his grey with Just for Men or any other hair dye. I don’t think I’d want him to, anyway, but it’s strange to think that in a few years I’ll be sleeping with a man who’s completely grey. A man I made grey.

I fear that this past year I may have contributed to the silvery strands of brittle hair. I mean, the bad economy and the life-sucking job are certainly also to blame, but I definitely helped. And for that I feel very, very sorry.

I feel sorry for all the nights John came home and I hadn’t bothered with dinner because the kids wouldn’t eat it anyway. (I HATE dinner time.)

I feel sorry for taking advantage of his allowing me to sleep in mornings. (And I wonder why he dozes off at 9:00pm just when I’m raring to go.)

I feel most sorry for a lot of other things that I’m just not going to divulge because you’d probably spit at your computer screen. Let’s just say I can be difficult.

I am not sorry for not ironing. I loathe ironing. He can iron his own damn shirts. (We put that in the pre-nup.)

Don’t get me wrong- he causes me unneeded stress, too. He snores. He hoards mugs. Coffee mugs. We have over fifty mugs and he keeps bringing home more. He recently brought home four matching Senator George Maziarz mugs. Four.

He adopts a new catch-phrase every year or so. When we met it was, “For the love of God!” Recently, he would insert “At the end of the day…” into any given conversation. Lately, it’s “That’s great hustle!” I don’t even know what that one means.

He won’t watch a movie filmed before 1985. He insists he will, but he won’t. He’d fall asleep. He couldn’t pick out Humphrey Bogart in a lineup.

But he loves me. I mean, he really loves me. And he’s infinitely patient with me. I see those grey hairs, and I’m reminded how lucky I am. Because he’s never, ever walked away.

So I’m thankful. Thankful for every single hair I’ve made grey, and for the ones I have yet to turn. Infinitely thankful.

(Happy Thanksgiving.)