WHEN YOU FIND A WHITE HAIR you might stand there with bare feet soaking up cold tile, and grow eyes large and incredulous, or else laugh in joy and passage-rite. And there might be a moment of disbelief or confusion: you might text your sister and save the strand in the cover of a book for keeping so she can inspect it when next she comes, to affirm or endorse, to disprove maybe, or perhaps even to bless. And while you’re waiting for her coming, you still sit down next to the reality that death is on its way for you. May I be honest here? It feels like cheating, to find a white hair when you’re still single and childless. These are thoughts about aging hair and imposter syndrome. The findings of such kinds It seems that erasure of of hair seem always tied to lived experiences comes my kids or the mortgage or no thanks to the spouse. in subtly horrible ways: And I’m just wondering scar cream and cellulite where the room is for all lotion, rigid belts for us folks to gather, those of who are growing whiterolling flesh, disguises us old without the usual for the laugh ridges of impetuses. Or leastways, a late-night belly laughs. lower rate of the usuals.
I’ve lived a semi-conventional life with spurts into non. And the defensive thought rises in me that I’ve earned that hair, though to whom I’m arguing is unclear (which is the great trick of impostering). This hair didn’t come from babies or fixed-year interest rates, but it did come from living, I say to the invisible they who circle around my choices and cast 5
