It began predictably enough: the first gray threads I found in my hair when I hit my thirties.  The threads soon turned to ribbons, but I had just had a baby (my second) and was in no shape to deal with the gray. Gray was interesting, I reasoned. Gray was subtle, intellectual and hip.  Soon enough the baby became a toddler and her older brother started school.  I woke up one morning and decided that the gray was neither intellectual nor subtle.  Gray was simply old.

I began to plan my campaign.  First in my line of attack was a series of home treatments inspired chiefly by antics inspired by a rerun of “I Love Lucy.” There was the Five Minute Color Solution. It worked all right; it just looked like I had looked like I dipped my head in large vat of shoe polish. I dumped the stuff in a hurry and moved on to various mousses and gels that stained the grout in my bathroom shower, more towels and pillowcases than I care to think about and left ominous black drops—squid’s blood? Primordial ooze? —across my dining room floor.  It took a while, but I realized that I would need professional help.

So began the round of hair colorists and dyes, the highlights that turned brassy and orange, the dark browns that were ashy and possibly lethal.  I switched to henna, which was, I hoped, less toxic, but the two-step process demanded about three hours of my time every six weeks and I grew weary with the upkeep.  Still as soon as I saw the gray sprouting at temples and hairline, I would quickly dial up the colorist for my next quick fix.

But all along, there was a soft, subversive voice in my head that said, Why do I have to color my hair? Why is twenty-five the template when I am about to turn fifty?   I thought of a woman I saw regularly at my gym: small, strong, with short gray hair, bright blue eyes and very red lipstick, even when she was sweating on the Stairmaster or doing a killer set of squats. I admired her but more than that, I envied her.  She wasn’t a slave to the tedium in the colorist’s chair; she owned her age with pride and with panache.  I wanted to be like her. And a month or two shy of my fiftieth birthday, I decided that I could. I told my hairdresser that I wanted to toss my box of henna away, and then, as the gray started coming in, I asked her for a short, head hugging crop.
It was a bit shocking at first.  My children were upset—It so gray,can’t you fix it? they asked—though my husband, Lord love him, was a fan from the start.  Friends and acquaintances that hadn’t seen me in a while went overboard complimenting the new coif.

But most important, I loved it, not only for the way it looked, which I did think was cool, but more for the way it felt: light, fresh, liberated, and, paradoxically younger than I would have imagined.  I adopted the red lips of my role model at the gym, and these days, paint on a coat of Chanel’s Fire even to walk the dog.  (Hey, I never said I didn’t care about the way I looked; I just got tired of dying my hair as a means of maintaining it.)

In June, I turned fifty two, a little more than two years since I cropped and dropped—the coloring that is.  I can imagine doing all sorts of things in the next decade: flying to Paris, with my husband for our twenty-fifth (appropriately enough, our silver) wedding anniversary.  Taking up tennis or tap dancing—maybe both.  Writing a new novel, and another one after that.  Seeing my son off to college, and my daughter too. But I can’t imagine coloring my hair again; not when I’ve experienced what a blessed relief it was to just up and quit.    Forget the salt and pepper—it’s silver, I tell myself. Let it shine.