Silver Hairs Among The Grey

I'm prematurely aged. My hair a helmet of silver-grey. I know I should still have a cap of burnished dark brown hair, healthy, shining, robust and curly. My genetic inheritance predisposes me to such a luxuriance of hair. Hair that stubbornly refused all my earlier-years' encouragement to become more docile, more laid-down, more, well, straight. Dark brown, with auburn highlights. That's me. That's what I should still look like.

Instead, innocently surveying my image in the mirror - in a house rife with mirrors, they make marvelous decorative and room-enlarging features - someone else's head of hair is there, perched in my head. Oh that's right, I've also got a few wrinkles here and there, nothing serious. Laugh and sun-squint marks on my smooth and tender skin. Honourable wrinkles. At least I don't have anything resembling a turtle's neck, which is what some 71-year-olds end up with.

My eyebrows too, always dark, nicely arched and neatly set on my brow have suddenly - well, not so suddenly - become grey and kind of scattered looking, they've lost their orderly appeal. My teeth, oh good grief, I can still remember what they looked like to me - talk about shattering illusions - when I happened to be brushing my teeth the same time as my granddaughter, standing before the mirror in the powder room and we both smiled.

Hers, gleaming white, perfectly arrayed in her lovely young mouth. Mine? When did they assume that ghastly yellow cast for heaven's sake? Well, that's life, isn't it? Her supple young body as opposed to mine. Ha, gotcha! Mine is still supple. Enough so that I can bend over easily, and place the palm of my hands flat on the floor before me. And when she tries to do that very same thing, she can only succeed by bending her knees.

She's lovely and fresh, I'm kind of worn, but there's some freshness in there anyway. That's life.