Spun Silver

Today I saw a picture on Facebook of one of my mother's cousins and agemates.  Lorraine is 94 now and has white hair just like my mother had.  Her granddaughter had noticed the first gray hair on her own head before she was 30.  She chalked it up to the stress of being a medical school student, and went to the effort of covering it up--till she tired of the arduous process, and decided to "go gray."  At a recent family reunion, she looked around at her aunts and uncles and cousins and noticed that most of her relatives had more gray/white hair than their spouse did. She was ready by now to claim the early graying tendency as a mark of distinction and connection with her relatives.  That's how I feel.   

I often think of one time when I held a clump of my mother's silver threads in my hands, and combed and formed them into braids.  I pinned the braids up into a coil "just so" and pinned her covering in place over the braids.  It happened in the handicapped bathroom stall at church.  I brought in a folding chair for my mother, and I went to work with her hair supplies spread out on the toilet lid. 

My sister Linda usually fixed Mom's hair, but on this evening, she could not leave work early enough to get home before Dad was ready to leave for church, taking Mom along.  Dad called and asked me if I could come early and do her hair at church while he attended another pre-meeting.  I agreed. 

Somehow that space and that experience ended up feeling sacred to me, and I wanted to keep alive always the memory of this part of my mother's beauty.  My own white hair connects me to my mother, and I have never wished to cover it up, especially at the cost of spending time and money to make it happen.  If I had braids now, they would be dark brown, so I haven't lived quite long enough yet to earn those spun silver braids, but maybe someday someone will hold my silver hair in their hands and aspire to owning such beauty.