On embracing the natural

Except I'm not ready yet

I’ve always loved the idea of a vacation day as a chance to reject wearing real clothing in public, or putting on makeup, or doing my hair. I also thought I would never tire of the pleasure of wearing my pajamas all day. But lately, I don’t recognize myself.

“Little did you know that one day I was going to look this hideous,” I say to my spouse Janyce as we are getting out of the car at the Chatham rail trail. 

“Stop,” she says. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”

“I didn’t say I was hideous, I said I look hideous. There is a difference,” I say.

“You don’t look hideous,” she says, pausing by the side of the car to help our old dog get down from the backseat. Overhead, three swallows dip and swerve in the azure sky and I shield my eyes from the sun as I watch them. 

Just yesterday, I gave Janyce exactly ten minutes at 5pm to get herself packed. “I can’t take it one more second,” I said. “Let’s just go.”

It’s now mid afternoon on a Thursday before Memorial Day weekend and we’ve just stepped out into an empty parking lot. I scoff at my purple sneakers and red wool socks. I notice, too, that I’m also wearing my pink Cape Cod sweatshirt pulled over my pajama top, and a blue face mask dotted with baby hedgehogs now starting to fray on one side. 

“Well, okay maybe you’re right,” says Janyce, smiling back at me in my ridiculous ragged getup. By contrast, she is carefully put together. Her natural graying hair is only slightly growing out of a pixie cut, beginning to curl at the edges, and she is wearing a much more stylish green and gold face mask, flattering jeans, and a fitted designer jacket. 

 “But you still look adorable to me,” she says.

This is the first day of our mini vacation after months in the house. We spent a blissful analog morning away from our devices, lounging around listening to CDs on an old boom box. Our plan was simple. We’d sink into a couple of curated vacation days, designed to be nothing more than a change in scenery and a feast for our senses. We’d walk the beach trail with our dog, order takeout from our favorite restaurants, take a long drive with the windows down, breathing in the sweet smell of newly mowed grass and cool wafts of salt air, and we’d stir up a craft cocktail at 4pm. In other words, we’d live out our retirement years right now. 

Halfway down the paved trail, a biker or two whiz by us from behind, but we can spot the walkers approaching from enough of a distance to pull up our masks in advance and walk by them silently, each one of us barely registering the existence of the other. It’s as if we’re somehow all the enemy now and we pass by quickly with our eyes averted.

“That’s the one I want,” says Janyce, pointing to the delicate red-tinged ground cover growing wild by the side of the trail. For weeks, we’ve talked of nothing more than how to transform our sparse lawn into a meadow, with clover for the bees, and native plants.

On the drive over, I pulled my passenger windshield visor down to frown at my hair in the mirror. I’ve been testing out what it might mean to go natural and instead I’ve become more and more obsessed with the wildness of my hair. It’s like a blown dandelion. I endlessly exclaim to Janyce that she needs to stop everything and take a good look at how much white I have. In my daily video chats with my mother, I make constant remarks about how I’m going to seed.

I’ve always loved the idea of a vacation day as a chance to reject wearing real clothing in public, or putting on makeup, or doing my hair. I also thought I would never tire of the pleasure of wearing my pajamas all day. But lately, I don’t recognize myself.

“Look at this,” I said to Janyce this morning while holding my hair up to expose the roots, and grimacing at the sharp delineation of white from brown on the top of my head. 

“Kris, no more talking about your hair,” she said.

My colorist called me that morning to let me know I was first on the schedule when the salon opens in a few weeks. But I will have to wear a mask and be careful not to touch a thing, and there will be no blow-drying. I’ll have to prepay over the phone and wait in the car till they call me, and she will meet me gowned up, in goggles, wearing a mask with a shield, and it will be best if we don’t talk at all. I can’t be late. We will have less than an hour.

“It will be different,” she said, “But I can’t wait to see you.”

Like everything in the world, it’s different on the Cape this year, too. Our favorite walking path on the beach is out of commission while the Army Corp of Engineers is there to dredge the channel. The shops are closed, of course, and parking lots to beaches have illustrated graphics for every reminder: cover up with a mask, keep your distance, don’t venture too far from home because there are no bathrooms open, and by all means keep your visit short. It’s beautiful this spring with full flowering trees and turkeys in every yard, but strangely empty of the vibrant human life that makes up the start of a Cape Cod tourist season.

I feel restrained by it all. I miss my life. I miss being with other people. I miss my colored hair.

My good friend Sandy used to say helpful things to me when I would go on a self-critical rampage. I’ve found myself thinking about her lately. She’d have had a few jokes to make about the state of affairs in the world, and reassuring comments about my weight gain and wild hair. “Kristopher, every woman puts on weight after 50 and your hair is perfect. You’d look good even bald.”

Massachusetts is slowly trying to open up. Maybe I’m trying to open up, too. I’d like to think I’m ready to embrace all the changes in the world and those brought on by my mid-life aging, and just roll with them gracefully, even the natural white of my hair. Especially my hair. But for now, that might be one change too many.