BEFORE THE DAY IS OVER

Have you ever awakened to the certain knowledge that this is the day when a question will be answered? Today is such a day for me. By the time it ends, when the sun has fallen below the western horizon, I will know for sure whether blondes have more fun. Even as I sit here, writing at this very moment, a transformation is taking place. A change as subtle as the melting of winter into spring. It is one of those days I knew I would never see, and now it is here.

I was never going to colour my hair. “Grow old gracefully,” I exhorted. “Never be ashamed to be who you really are.” I was picturing a wise, silver-haired maven holding court for a dozen eager listeners. Silver hair meant wisdom.

But now I ask you, have you ever heard of anyone having silver roots? It seems they are grey when they poke their little heads out some time around your fortieth birthday. Silver, apparently comes later, maybe at age eighty.

The moment they appeared I ran to the drugstore. “Give me a colour exactly like the colour of these natural ends,” I gasped. And thus my hair got a name, Light Golden Brown, which everyone said was a little bit red, even more so under the summer sun. That was back in the days when there were only a few grey (excuse me, silvering) roots.

“Just how many silvering roots do you think there are?” I asked the girl who cut my hair last month. She was about twenty, tall, sophisticated, kind to old people like me.

“Oh,” she said diplomatically, “a few.”

“Give me a percentage,” I said. It seemed like this was the time when I could really face the truth, sitting there in a crowd of strangers, brushing severed hairs from my cheek, trying to keep them out of my coffee.

“Well,” she said, taking a long time. I imagine she was counting, “Well, half maybe.”

It shouldn’t have hurt me. I know it shouldn’t. These insidious markers of time’s passage have been there a dozen years, multiplying every week, maybe every day. But it did hurt me. I mean, I have thick hair, and experts say a thick-haired person has as many as 200,000 hairs. Cut that in half and you have 100,000 grey hairs, give or take 10,000. How would you like to have 100,000 grey hairs?

There are stages you go through when half your hairs are grey. First there is the numbness, then denial. Then comes anger, and then bargaining. “How about,” I said thoughtfully to my family one day, “how about I dye my hair grey so the roots won’t show so much!”

They laughed. They thought I was joking. I most certainly was not! “What will you do when the 100,000 brown roots start showing?” they wanted to know. Sometimes they can be maddeningly logical.

I was stumped. I had no words to answer. So I struck a different bargain. “How about I dye my hair blonde, something between the grey roots and the brown?”

They couldn’t think of an answer for that, or maybe they are just worn out from waiting for my silver-haired wisdom to set in. So today, as I write, my hair is losing its claim on Light Golden Brown. In only a few moments it will be Dark Ash Blonde. In a couple of months there will be 100,000 grey roots, and 100,000 brown roots, or maybe only 90,000 brown roots. But today, by the time the sun goes down, I will know if blondes have more fun.