Gray Hairs

When A.J.'s preschool teacher asked him a few months ago to describe what color my hair was he told her gray. Very funny. I thought maybe he had just heard me complain about all the gray hair that I have and thought that what ever gray was, it was the color of my hair. So then I quizzed him on some things that are really gray around my house. He knew they were gray. Then I asked him to tell me again what color my hair was, and he answered gray.

In the weekend Parade newspaper insert, there was a little blurb about David Gregory, an up and coming news anchor at NBC who frequently fills in on the Today Show. I would describe his hair as gray and thought he was probably in his 40's. Still prematurely gray, but a bit older than me. Turns out he is 36! That is really not that much older than me!

Unfortunately, I seem to have inherited the tendency for premature gray from my mother's side of the family. My Uncle Francis has always had gray hair for as long as I can remember and now he has a beautiful head of snow white hair that makes him look very distinguished. My gray streaks just make me look and feel old!

But it does seem like stress plays some role too. I discovered my first patch of gray hair when I was in my mid 20's. I had been working on a pretty intense project at the Governor's Office that required a lot of late nights and a lot of details to coordinate. Not too long after it was all over, I noticed a gray patch right in my bangs. I was sure the stress from the project had caused it.

The second patch of gray hair seemed to come from the Olympics. I coordinated the creation of a joint information center which carefully balanced the needs of dozens of local, state and federal government agencies. It was several months of intense build up and about four weeks of long days and nights of operations. That gray patch grew right where my part splits on the left side.

Motherhood has blessed me with a few random gray hairs over the past few years, but nothing as stressful as the past week has been for our family. Having a son endure a craniotomy and nerve graft and then spend 5 long days and nights in the hospital fighting the nurses and doctors at every attempt to help him get better was enough to develop two or three more patches of gray hairs on my head. As I look at my hair today, I see way more than I did before we went to the hospital.

The only upside to this whole thing is that maybe I will be blessed with a beautiful head of snow white hair too once it all goes. In the mean time, thank goodness for hair dye!