Just a box of hair color

Was it Clairol that had the campaign slogan, "It's just a box of hair color," I think with a radiant Jane Seymour modeling her shining tresses? Presumably those shining tresses were the result of said Clairol hair color.

I have mixed feelings about coloring my hair. I loved the rich brown I had into my 30s, but as I aged, I noticed the inevitable gray hairs coming in. My dad, who had beautiful black hair, silvered very gracefully, first with a shock at his forehead, then the silver spread very evenly over his head, making him very distinguished. I, too, have that shock of silver in the front, but the rest of my hair is fading to the dishwater gray-brown that my mother ended up with. So, I enhance nature. I color to keep the richer brown of 20-some years ago, and tolerate the lighter shock up front that no amount of color seems to be able to cover completely. A generous friend says I'm channeling my inner Bonnie Raitt. I'll take it. I think she's beautiful.

I have a neighbor, "Nancy," who is in her early 80's. I've been her neighbor for more than 35 years, so we know each other well. My husband, who grew up in this house, has known her most of his life. He babysat her daughters back in the day. She watched us raise our own children. She said to me the other day, "When is your hair going to go gray?" This is not the first time she has said this. I'm not embarrassed to say that hair color is my secret. This would not be the first time I've told her this. I asked my husband if he thought my hair color seemed unnatural. He asked me if I thought Nancy should be the bellwether for my personal grooming decisions. Made me laugh, but it occurred to me this morning, coloring my hair myself in these COVID times, that, maybe, in an "out of the mouths of babes" kind of way, she might have a point. Older people, like children, have few filters. Maybe my hair is "younger" than my face?

A very good friend of mine in her 70s has a glorious mane of curly hair, now more white than anything else. She says she started turning in her 20s. She was in Asia a few years ago, and the waitress at the restaurant where she was having dinner commented to her (talk about no filters) that she had "old hair-- young face," which amused us all, but the idea (mine anyway) is to not put forth the opposite.

Time flies. . .

Time does fly, sometimes. These are weird times, life in the time of Covid. I am working from home for now, making me feel freer to browse some of my old habits, like blogging. The modern journal, in my case, an electronic picking up of the dog-eared diary of my youth.

Today's milestone? I just finished my latest needlepoint canvas. I remembered that I'd written a post about a new stitching project-- ELEVEN years ago. Holy cow. Anyway, I started this one not long after I'd posted about it, then put it away for a long time.

The colors are wonderful, but so subtle I needed bright light to keep the blues and the greens separate. The only free time I had was in the evenings, and the light was never good enough. New job and other life changes also interrupted my concentration. It is now finished, and I declare myself pleased. 

It is kind of bittersweet, my obsession with a bee motif. The urban hives in my yard have been abandoned for several seasons now. It is difficult to keep a hive going through the winter here. Not that we are all that consistently cold, but because we are not, the mite problems are not to be trifled with. My bee partners and I preferred not to chemically intervene as much as some bee keepers do, and I'm sure that contributed to our hive losses. The hive boxes still sit there, an admonishment to our pride at our first bumper harvest. It is expensive to start all over again, which we did for three years in a row, so my bee partners and I have decided to leave off for now. Now that I'm working for a local university, maybe I'll inquire to see if the biology department has any interest in the equipment. Or maybe we'll try again. Hope springs eternal.