Roots and Wings

I recognized my old friend immediately when she walked into the chapel. Her face was as girlishly cute as it always had been, with freckles scattered around her little (especially by Brooklyn Jewish standards) nose. It still amuses me that she is so tiny -- she had towered over me in elementary school -- but I am no longer surprised by it.

It took my mother an additional moment or two, but she smiled quickly enough. I didn't recognize you at first, she told my old friend. I love your hair blond! I panicked. It's bad enough my mother is deaf; I am not prepared for her to be blind as well. My friend's hair is no longer brown, the way it always was, but it is certainly not blond. It is gray. A delicate light gray, so soft looking it almost begs to be touched. She has done what I have always promised myself I would do, let her hair go where nature takes it. I have kept my promise when it comes to wrinkles and fat pockets and all the other indignities that come with age, but I have been weak about the gray. The whitening of my hair started pretty late, but I cannot seem to give up on the battle, every six weeks, to conceal the truth.

Hours later, when my mother again mentioned how she had at first not recognized my friend with blond hair, I broke the news to her.  She was adamant. It's not gray. It's blond. It looked pretty. My mother is always right, except when she's not. Usually, I just let it go, but this was important.

I don't like it, she said, when she finally backed down. I reminded her she had said it looked pretty. Apparently, it did look pretty when it was blond. Not when it turned gray though. I don't like that my daughter's friends can be gray. 

I get it. I don't like that I was in New York for my other dear old friend's husband's funeral. At 60, he had been diagnosed with early onset dementia, a most deadly kind. Two years later, he was gone. My friend is far too young to have lost her husband, the love of her life for so many years. Her two beautiful daughters are far too young to have lost their father. As one of them said, during her eloquent eulogy, he had marveled once when, watching her do what she does, that she had "become her own thing." It's what's supposed to happen, that our kids become their own "things," but we are supposed to be able to stick around to enjoy it, and also to be there just in case they need a little bit of reassurance. With luck, we should be able to stick around to watch our children turn gray, whether they hide it or not, whether or not it reminds us how fleeting life is.

My friend's daughter also mentioned a saying that had always hung on the wall in their home, something about parents giving their children roots and wings. The roots grow out, and the wings sometimes take our children farther away than we'd like, but the roots are always there and the wings are a good thing. It's just that sometimes, if only to make ourselves feel better, we see things the way we want to see them.