Luky
I must be one of the few women of my age who has never dyed her hair.
Initially this was through no fault of my own. When I was a teenager I yearned to be a bottle blonde.
When first my parents and later my husband put their foot down in this regard, I abandoned the whole idea in resignation.
Right now my hair is going grey but I am still not thinking of dying it.
At this stage of my life, the ageing process holds few terrors for me.
I ascribe my equanimity in the face of advancing age to the fact that post fifties have brought me many more assets than liabilities and have greatly simplified my life.
When I was young I worried about the opinion of others.
I wanted to be liked by everyone and it broke my heart when people disliked me.
These days I accept that there are some people who refuse to accept me and I leave them to their own devices.
My looks were great source of worry to me in the past as were the generous proportions upon which I was designed.
I have now learned to live with the fact that I'll never be a Joan Collins.
Reaching my senior years taught me to look for plus-points in irritating events I cannot change.
If the day after Christmas cleaning was finished, my husband arrived home with 500 loaves of bread, 187 toys, fifty pairs of second-hand shoes, three refuse bags of discarded books and seven cardboard boxes filled with clothing - (he ran a Charity) - I no longer pulled my hair out by the roots.
Instead, I congratulated myself on having had the sense to land a guy with a heart for others.
When I find myself tense, stressed out and quarrelsome, I pull out a verse from the little Bread of Life box on top of my piano, expose my mind to the wisdom of a scriptural verse such as: 'My grace is enough for you' and press on regardless.
At fifty, one becomes less judgemental. When other people have a spot of bother with their youngsters, I no longer think as I once might have done; 'There was never any love in that house,' or: 'The parents are paying the price for their former weakness.'
Instead, I think: 'Those parents are learning the truth of the old saying that children make adults of their parents rather than the reverse.'
When my own children make choices which are not necessarily mine, I accept that all people must do what they must do within the scope of their own aptitudes and talents and that one person's meat (mine) is another person's poison (theirs). My fifties taught me that life's vagaries are not nearly as important as the way we grapple with them.
We have been given the resilience to bear all that befalls.
If we were to focus on life's real issues rather than on winning the approval of others (who half the time are scarcely aware of our existence) we'd be better off.
God does not expect us to look fifteen at fifty or to make it big in the money stakes the way some of our peers do.
He simply expects us to bear the burden of the heat of the day, one day at a time.
Yesterday's trials are over and we can't be sure whether we'll be alive tomorrow.
As for today, we have God's assurance that His grace is enough for us.
Catherine Nicolette
Unlike Mom, I have rung the changes in hair colour wise a number of times.
My natural colour blonde, became a slightly mousier browny blonde as the years went by.
And one day last Summer when I was in a good mood, I cheerily decided to accept an offer to be a model for an herbal henna haircolour.
I didn't bargain for the fact that I would be placed in the front window of a Dublin shop with towels around my neck, where the henna paste was applied to my hair.
The henna after being mixed looked like nothing so much as cow pats, I did not realise the sight that I made until a true Dub lad strolled by the window with his friend, looked in at me and then bolted after shouting out loudly, 'What've they done to that girl's head?' What indeed.
The next morning I woke up and looked at myself in the mirror. What a fright.
I had gone, 'red, with the shine of conkers'. From quiet blonde the day before it was quite a shock. I've since become used to it.
In days gone by, I dabbled with dark brown (the roots showed too quickly).
Almost black (I looked quite ill with the pale complexion).
Bottle blonde (what possessed me...?) But the best was years ago when I worked with a charitable group.
A hairdressers that had closed sent us a box of hair products to sort through and use.
I chose temporary hair colour that was supposed to 'brighten up the blonde in your hair.'
Dear readers, always, always check the expiry dates on your hair colour products.
I hadn't noted that this one was three years out of date.
When I finished shampooing my hair, and the colour had set, a bright carrot orange stared back at me. Temporary? My eye.
It took ages to finally fade out. It was not one of my finer moments, though it led to much hilarity among my professional colleagues as I gloomily went on my breaks to wash my hair yet again in an attempt to get the colour out.
So, for now, I am red and dashing. But one thing's for sure; I'll never be orange again if I can help it...
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