The Matter of Gray

So... I went to get a cut and color today. Sorely needed. I was excited to get there and get my stringy mess cleaned up. But I was unprepared for the emotional mess that I would turn into while in the chair.

My hairdresser, the ever-fantastic Brandi, and I had our whole discussion about what we were going to do with color and she mixed it up right there in a bowl. And then she began to work. Normally, she starts with foils at the top of my head and works her way around. So I became curious when, instead of starting with foils, she started using her brush to dab at my roots.

"Are you doing it differently this time?" I inquired.

"No."

"But normally you don't do it like this," I persisted.

"I'm doing the same thing I always do, " she replied.

And that's when the world as I knew it turned upside down. Cause that's when she added, "I can't put the foils in until I finish COVERING THE GRAY!"

Ok... um... WHAT? The GRAY? What gray? I am a mere child. How can I have gray? I believe at that point, in my shock, I said something to the effect of "That's not gray! It's dirty blonde!" Brandi, to her credit, kept a straight face as she met my stricken eyes in the mirror and responded firmly, "No. It's gray."

And now, let me take you on a journey of my mental voyage upon completion of this devastating conversation. The part of the woman in denial will be played by Italics. The part of the realistic/sado-masochist will be played by bold, since it's voice is so very, very much louder!

She's so wrong. There is no way I am gray. She just can't see it close enough to realize that it's blonde.

Actually, dumbass, she's able to see it a lot closer up than you are! She's staring down on it, under bright, heavy lights, right now.

Well, there is no way it is gray. She must have me confused with another customer in her mind.


I doubt it. She's looking at your face, calling your name and there is the little sheet with your name on it sitting on her counter with all the details about your hair. See it? It's right there.

She's got the wrong card.

Um no. Your name is at the top.


But I'm only about to be 35 years old! How can I be gray?

35 is not as young as you always imagine it to be. You're getting older.

But... I mean... but... she's mistaken.

Ok, I'm sure it would be kinder to let you live in denial, but join me here in realistic land for a while, won't you? You have gray hair.

But my Grandmother had gray hair.

Yes. And once upon a time, I'm sure SHE thought it was dirty blonde.

My mother didn't go gray until her 40s.

Well, how special for her. You are gray at 35.


And so it went. On and on. For an hour and fifteen minute hair cut. I tried every rationalization I could, trying to convince myself that I have not, in fact, made this transition into old. But the realistic/mean/persistent/relentless side of me finally won. I have gray hair.

I've not had any problems in the past with benchmarks of aging. I accepted 30, even welcomed it, with great aplomb. I had heard from so many friends over the years that 30s are so much better than 20s. I have one month left to be on the right said of 35 and I'm ok with that too.

I'm ok with an already slow metabolism slowing down even further. I'm ok with little crows feet and hands that aren't as smooth as they used to be. I'm ok with more aches and pains after a workout, complete inability to recover from a hangover in less than 24 hours, less interest in going out at night and more interest in my couch. All of these things, I embrace.

Nothing, in fact, has ever made me feel old. Until the "g" word.

I'm so unsettled, in fact, that I am going to continue to convince myself that I am still just a dirty blonde and that she was just looking at me in the wrong light. The second I turn 40, I will be ready to accept gray and embrace it as friend. (Well, friend that needs to be covered up every 6-8 weeks, that is.) Until that point, I remain a bottle blonde covering up a darker, dirtier, slightly washed out yet pure brunette.

With highlights.

Nocturnal Visitor

So... I had a visitor the other night in my sleep.

Let me start off by saying this. I believe that when people from my life who have passed away appear in my dreams, that is their way of paying me a visit. I know most people would disagree, saying it is only a subconscious memory that my brain is throwing up on the drive-in wall that is my brain while I sleep. (I'm an active dreamer. Always have been. More active than I'd like, believe me.)

But I prefer to think of them as visits. As discussed in previous posts, as a Jewish girl, I don't really know what I believe about the afterlife. I'm not sure whether we die and our souls go somewhere and are reunited with our loved ones, whether we simply live on in the memories of those who loved us or whether we are just gone. But a part of me has always thought that when people come to me in my sleep, they are just letting me know they are still here for me.

Ever since Poppa died, whenever I feel sad, I have been listing for myself all the people he loved who he has possibly been reunited with. It's a long list. His brother who died of leukemia when he was still a young boy and his father who died a year later from, as family legend has it, a broken heart. My Grandmother. Most of his friends. So many people. And secretly, I hoped when he was done catching up with all of them, he would come pay me a visit. I didn't think it would happen for quite a while, but I think I knew he would show up someday.

The other night, there he was. He looked so young. So strong and healthy. There were no more issues with his legs or his eyes. He didn't look like he weighed 45 lbs with his clothes on as he did those last months. He looked exactly the way I remember him looking when I was a teenager. It was amazing.

In the past, I have had dreams about my other grandparents who are no longer alive. But in those dreams, the fact that they were there even though they were supposed to be dead was a non-issue. My dream self didn't actually pay any attention to the idea that it was speaking to Grandparents who are no longer of this earth. They were simply there, part of the backstory of whatever strange thing was happening in my dream. One time tho, I swear I woke up and smelled my Grandmother's perfume.

But this dream was different. My dream-self knew he was supposed to be dead. I knew he was there for a visit and no one else would understand. He told me he knew how much we all missed him. He said he carried my heart around with him all the time. He gave me two of his sweaters that he told me he had taken with him when he died (???) so that I could have them to remember him by. (One of them was bright orange, which was most definitely not a sweater I remember him wearing, but the other was an oatmeal colored sweater which I have seen him wear many times.) And then he gave me a hug. It was a really long hug. The kind you give someone when you know it is going to be a long time until you see them again. There was no awkwardness to it. I remember in my dream I was crying pretty hard because I knew this was the only visit I was going to get for a while. And then he was gone.

In my dream, I went downstairs holding the sweaters he had given me only to find a television production truck in my parents' living room. Apparently they were filming American Idol on the front lawn and there wasn't enough room for this particular truck on the street. Which in my dream seemed quite logical when my mother explained it. I then proceeded to tell her all about Poppa's visit and as we began to argue about whether or not it really happened, I woke.

It was about 5:45AM. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to roll over and go back to sleep immediately. Which I almost did. But then, in a rush, the dream came back. Every detail came back crystal clear. And along with the memories came the biggest smile I had smiled in a long time. I couldn't wipe it off my face. I was laying there in bed feeling so content and relieved that at last I got to tell him goodbye the way I wanted to. Not the "real" goodbye I gave him where he was barely conscious when I said it. This was a real send off and a chance to tell him when he could really understand how much I love him.

It's been about a week and a half now since he was here. I've told a few people in my life about it. Some have agreed that it was really a visit, some have humored me. But in my heart, I know that he was here. I know he came to say goodbye to me.

I just hope he didn't see all the sex toys in the other room while he was here.

April 21st, 1993 2:37AM

So... I just realized that the 15 year anniversary of a significant, if not important, event in my life has just passed. Not many people would even find this event significant. Probably only two other people in the world. And I'm not even sure about those two.

Fifteen years ago, I was a student at Ithaca College and I was living in Hood Hall. Hood was one of the dorms in the upper Quad area of campus. Good lord I loved that dorm. I moved in during the middle of my freshman year, having finally been released from the hellish nightmare that was first semester freshman year and its accompanying roommates. It was in Hood Hall that I met the best group of friends that I had ever had. Chief among them were my two closest friends, Lianne and Gary.

Li and Gary and I were together all the time sophomore year. Not that we didn't hang with other people, but always, at the end of the day, we somehow wound up together in Li's and my room, hanging out and doing that college thing of babbling nonsensically about all matters. Some very strange discussions in that room. Some of them altered by, shall we say, artificial means. Much of them infused with hysterical laughter. All of them typical college verbal vomit although at the time we thought them brilliant and insightful.

On the night in question, April 21st, 1993, Gary and Li and I were hanging out in the room again, listening to music and not talking much. Gary's birthday began that night at midnight. So he was melancholy, as he often was on his birthday. 'What does my life mean?' 'Where is it going?' 'How did I wind up at Ithaca College where all the good parties get broken up by the cops on a regular basis?' Those kinds of wonderings.

So we were sitting in silence. Sober silence, strangely. Me on my bed, Li on hers and Gary staring blankly out the window, musing. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, began the typical college conversation. 'You know,' said Gar. 'We are never going to have this moment again. Once it's over, it's over and we can't ever get it back.'

I'm not sure what my response was to that, but knowing me, it was no doubt sarcastic in nature. He went on to make this point for a few minutes, talking about the beauty and fragility of moments like the one we were currently having. And then he made a declaration. 'Let's remember this moment for the rest of our lives. It's 2:37AM on April 21st, 1993 and we are sitting in your room listening to 'True' by Spandeau Ballet.' (I was in a retro 80's phase.)

Well, being a music-obsessed freak, all Gary needed to do was attach a song to a moment and there was instantly no doubt that I would remember it forever. And I have. If I close my eyes right now, I can picture the moment completely (although that would make it difficult to type.) It's clear as day.

For a while after college, Gary and I lived in the same time zone. And every year on his birthday, I would think of that minute. I'd remember how I felt that night. How I was so in love with college. How I loved the times we would sit around the three of us laughing and talking about stupid college stuff. I would miss college so much sometimes it was like a physical ache. Every year, I would mourn that minute at the same time I celebrated it, even though truth be told, after college, I was very rarely awake when the minute presented itself.

This Monday was Gary's birthday. He turned 35. (That's right Gar. I called you out!) And that moment turned 15. Which blows me away, cause it was just a second ago, I swear! These days, the melancholy guy who sat in the window waxing philosophical about lost moments has a wife and a son and an amazing life on the other side of the country. And I am here in North Carolina, with a life so utterly and completely different than anything I could have imagined for myself at the time. (see Grandma Crazy blog entry for proof!)

But in my mind, we're still there. Me, Lianne and Gary, sitting in room 207 of Hood Hall on the upper Quad of Ithaca College campus. Our entire lives are in front of us. So many amazing experiences in the future. With that one cheezy song from the 80s and one late night minute tying us together forever.

Thank God for late night college insights.

No escape

So... Charlotte is getting hammered with a thunderstorm right now. Actually, hammered might be too strong a word, but there is thunder and lightening and the rain is a-comin' down on this drought-ridden city.

Predictably, at the first flash of lightning and the first rumble of thunder, my faithful friend and alarm clock Richie begins to panic. It starts with an abrupt head lift up off the floor and a glance in my direction. I'm assuming he is checking to see if I heard it as well. Then the ears go flat back. The eyes get wide. The tongue starts hanging out and begins to drip, drip, drip onto the carpet. And then, just like Seabiscuit before him, he's off.

He starts by running around the coffee table in a circle, to see if perhaps the storm is only located in that corner of the room. Then he begins to widen his search for a storm-free area. He encompasses his favorite spot under the end table, rejects it and comes to stand beside me. He looks beseechingly up at me on the couch, wondering if that's a storm-free zone and if I will share it with him. In his younger days, he would jump up onto the couch in a panic and try to climb onto the back, getting as high as possible. Perhaps to avoid the flood he fears is coming? Or maybe he thinks the storm is only on the ground where he is.

When all these efforts prove fruitless he heads for the back door. I think somewhere in his mind, it is only the inside of the house that has betrayed him by allowing a storm in his presence. SURELY, if he can get to his backyard, where all things good happen, he will be free. After about ten minutes of me reassuring him that he won't like it outside (oh, if only he would listen when I talk...) I finally get up to prove to him that the storm is, in fact, worse outside. I open the back door and he bolts. Keen to put as much distance between him and house as possible. Sadly, several seconds later, reality kicks in and he realizes that the storm is not only worse out here, but there is also wet stuff falling on him from the sky. And so, with a panicked yet resigned look, he returns to the back door to be let in. Which I allow. After he sits. And I say 'I told you so.'

After this point, he stops looking for a way away from the storm and begins to find a way to make the whole thing less painful for himself. Somehow, being in a small enclosed space is his preference. (One morning I woke up after a pretty nasty overnight storm and he had wormed his way underneath my bed and was so tight under there that I had to help him get out.) As we speak he is sitting under my desk, curled in a ball between my feet. And my poor pumpkin is shaking like a leaf. And I've tried to reassure him, but mentally he is somewhere where I can't reach him. Come back, Richie! Come back!

Alphabetastic

So... meet my niece Zoe. She will be three this summer. Don't let that big grin and excited expression fool you. She's actually often happier and MORE excited than she looks in this picture. At least that's been my experience. Jill, if I'm wrong, I apologize but it's my blog so na na na.

Oh, how my niece loves her letters and numbers. She loves to count to herself and recite her alphabet. She enjoys pointing out letters when she sees them and will do so in restaurants, in the elevator, in the car as we pass letters on the road (you know, letters as part of signs or buildings. Not like a big letter "Z" standing on the side of the road waving at people. Cause Cleveland isn't really the type of place where letters stand on the side of the road waiting to be identified by a 2 year old child in the back of a Jeep Compass. Probably cause it's too cold to stand out there that long.) Sometimes she lays in her crib when she wakes up and recites the alphabet to herself. Sometimes she just counts to herself. The other day, she counted down from ten to one. Let me just brag on that for a second. Oh, shoot, did I forget to mention that she is a genius and quite mentally gifted? My bad.

Last time I was home, she had picked up this habit of imitating her mother answering the phone. She would, sometimes at random and sometimes when prompted by her Cool Aunt Sheri who was making sport out of annoying her sister, inquire as though having just picked up the phone, "Hello?" And then a beat. And then "HIIIII!" with a giant grin across her face. Like super giant. Like THRILLED to be saying hello. Which was charming and sweet enough on it's own. But for some reason, she associated this greeting with her then favorite letter of the alphabet. So after the "Hello? Hiiiii" exchange, she would exclaim (in this almost demonic voice which was obviously her imitating one of her talking toys) "THE LETTER D". The first time she did this, Cool Aunt Sheri almost passed out from laughing and crying at the same time. Little did I know, this was merely an appetizer for the next trip home.

I came home last week ready to continue playing the "Hello? Hi" game only to discover we had moved on. I was quite sad. She no longer took the bait. She ignored me completely. (Not unusual, you understand, but still sad.) But my sister said she had a new letter catch phrase. Not ten minutes later, she came over to my sister dragging a huge case of lego-adjacent (they serve the same purpose as legos, but Cool Aunt Sheri didn't drop the money for the real thing...) pieces. She asked my sister for a letter "W". My sister took four long straight lego-like pieces out and formed a letter "W". Zoe, overwhelmed with delight, took the "W" out of my sister's hand and held it, triumphant, over her head with both hands. You've never seen anyone so excited about or proud of a letter "W" before. And she threw her head back, presumably to admire it from below, and yelled out (typing this SO won't do it justice, but I'll do my best) "Waaaaaaaiiiiit aaaa MINUTE! It's the letter 'W'."

I pretty much fell off my chair. I was laughing so hard I had to simultaneously go fetal, wipe my eyes and cross my legs to keep from peeing. It wasn't so much the words as the inflection and the delight in her voice. If I didn't know better, I would think Ed McMahon had snuck into her room at night to teach her how to best introduce a living legend to an audience. The long drawn out "Waaaiiiiit" followed by the succinct "a MINUTE!" And topped off with the fanfare of the introduction of the fantastic letter "W"... she killed me. It took me ten minutes to recover. But it only got better.

After taking a victory lap with her letter "W", grinning like a five time gold-medal winner, she brought the "W" back down to her eye level and turned it upside down. And then, again, "Waaaaaaiiiiiiiiit a MINUTE! It's the letter 'M'." Oh god. I was dying. I couldn't control myself. Cause it was the letter "W" and then it became the letter "M" and that is just a phenomenon of nature. I tried to get her to turn it sideways and say that it was the letter "Sigma" but she seems to not enjoy the Greek alphabet as much as the English. But I trust she will in time.

Now, the interesting thing is that although she also enjoyed the letter "K" which my family members did a valiant job trying to construct with the lego-ish materials but ultimately failed at, no other letters would result in the level of delight that "W" and "M" inspired. I tried to do the letter "I" and the letter "U". (Now that I think about it, I probably could have really dazzled her with an "S" but I didn't have that inspiration until just now. Jill, give it a shot and let me know how it goes.)

I wonder if that's because the letter "W" is a fun word to say and the letter "M" is a fun noise. Whatever the reason, we celebrated these two exciting letters every day I was home at least once. I can't wait until the next time I see her. She'll probably be spelling the Gettysburg Address letter by letter and be able to balance my checkbook. Someone needs to do it. And God knows it shouldn't be me!

And in case you are wondering, it's not that I gave MYSELF the nickname Cool Aunt Sheri. It's just that I knew when she was born that this is what she will want to call me one day, so I just began the process early to let the rest of the family get used to it. Adults take longer to learn than children, you know?

In Loving Memory

So, I’ve heard the expression "life goes on" so many times and it’s not hard to understand its meaning. Obviously, the world continues to turn regardless of the events of my life or anyone else’s. The sun comes up and goes down, the seasons blend into one another and all those other applicable clichés. And between life changing events, I forget how strange it feels when life continues as usual although things have just permanently changed in my life.

Seven and a half hours ago, my life changed again. My Grandfather, my last remaining grandparent, my favorite grandparent, my banter partner and my friend, died this morning. I don’t know for sure that it was in his sleep, but I’m going to go ahead and pretend it was. And in those seven and a half hours, life has continued to go on and it feels so strange.

After hearing the news I began with the inevitable phone calls. Rearranging the next couple of days, finding someone to do my parties, doing laundry so I have something to wear in Cleveland, figuring out transportation options. And every once in a while, while I am going about these mundane, ordinary tasks, I hear my Grandfather’s voice. I hear the way he used to call me “Dolly”. I hear the way he used to waggle his fingers at me and say “Hellooooo” in a funny voice. I hear him calling to my niece, futilely trying to capture her attention while she watched Elmo. And I stop. And I think, Poppa’s gone. And tears well. And I’m sad. And then I either succumb for a few minutes and let them fall and allow myself to really think about it, or I decide now isn’t the time and I pull my emotions back.

Part of me wonders if this is the right way to honor someone I love so much. Someone who I so admired in many ways, even while I thought him old-fashioned and sometimes got angry at the things he said. I think back to a time when I was in Jr. High or something and I got a D in Health class. Not my first D by any stretch, but for some reason, I was really worried that when Poppa knew about it, he would be very disappointed in me. So I called him and told him first, before I told my parents or anyone else. And he was sad for me but never disappointed. So when I told Mom and Dad later, it was so much easier because I knew he wasn’t angry. Shouldn’t I be inconsolable on the floor? Should I really be thinking about mailing product out to customers since I can’t deliver it as planned today? Don’t I owe him my emotions today? All of them?

I know that it’s going to probably fall to me to write something about him to say at the funeral tomorrow and that’s really what I’ve been obsessively focusing on today. I wrote something for Grandma’s funeral, but it was very organic and just came to me in a moment. All day long I’ve been worrying about what to say about this man who I shared such a deep, meaningful connection with the for the last 34 years. And all I can remember is the story about the Health class. I remember us teasing each other sure, but the last few years, those moments have been few and far between, even though I often tried to force him into kidding around with me. At this point, the words that keep coming to mind are that this is what he wanted, what he’s wanted for years. He almost literally forced himself to go, always fearing he was a burden to his family, by refusing to eat or drink for the last week or so. Although most of his awareness was gone at that point, I know there was a part of him that was throwing up his hands and crying uncle. Is that something to say at a funeral? Shouldn’t it be a celebration of his life? Part of me is so angry at him. At how he gave up on life and wallowed in misery when he could have been trying to find a life in a new way. Part of me thinks that he sank himself into this state with self-pity and fear of new things. And part of me hates myself for those last three sentences.

My flight is boarding now. I’m no closer to answers than I was when I started this tirade. But life is going on. And I can either go with it, or not. Poppa would have wanted me to go with it. I just hope he always stays with me while I go.

Why I Am A Reverse Old Person

So, ever since I started this job, I have become what my friend Molly calls "A Reverse Old Person." What she means by this is I keep the exact opposite schedule of an older person. Normally, your (stereo-)typical old person wakes early in the morning, has breakfast by 8, lunch at 11:30, dinner at 5, in bed by 9.

My schedule is as follows: Wake when the furry alarm clock decides it is the right time. Futz around the house for a few hours cause I can't have breakfast immediately after he does or he will begin to think he is in charge of this pack and we just can't have that!

So breakfast usually somewhere between 10:30 and 11:30. That makes lunch sometime in the 2:30-3:30 region. Which leaves dinner the coveted time slot of 9ish, maybe 9:30. Maybe 10. And on nights when I have a party, dinner can be anywhere from 10-2AM, depending on when I get home. Can't do a party on a full stomach. (Check back for a later blog someday when I decide to explore why that's the case.) And bed around midnight.

But it's not just the food that makes my schedule seem weird. It's my work habits. Take today for example. Below follows my schedule:

8:30- Awoken by furry alarm clock. Let him out and go back to bed.
8:45- Give up hope of ever going back to bed and head to computer.
8:46- Commence to read EOnline, check out schedule for meetings the next day, and do general nothingness on the computer.
10:30- Breakfast
11:30- Trainer
12:30- PR deliveries in Matthews
2:30- Lunch
3:30- Go hang out at Molly's for a few hours just cuz
5:30- Return home. Begin work.

And NOW, it is 8:44PM and I just finished working. Going to go eat dinner. So I am forced to wonder why it is that I spent the entire day messing around and only got down to work in the evening. It wouldn't be so bizarre except this day is quite typical. Regular meals and a regular work schedule very rarely make an appearance in my life. They are most certainly the exception, not the rule.

In typing this, I was hoping to gain some perspective as to why I live my life in this fashion. I have come up blank. Not that it bothers me, in fact I think this is the best schedule I have ever had in my entire adult life. (Especially the going back to bed part) It's just odd.

Thoughts? Those of you who read this blog know me well. I'd be curious to hear your opinions.

And of course this blog begs the question-- when I am an ACTUAL old person, will my schedule change? Or will I have the schedule of an Old Reverse Old Person? And if that's the case, what will I do with myself when my lame-o friends all go to bed at 9?

These are deep thoughts. They make my head hurt. Enjoy.