Recently while looking into the mirror it occurred to me that the glistening locks of hair were not the results of the new conditioner I was using but the silver tint of gray hair! Me? Gray hair? It seemed preposterous. I shared this revelation with my wife who marveled that I was just noticing it\u2014apparently I\u2019ve had gray hair for a while.<\/p>\n
Really?<\/p>\n
I studied the new coloration for a moment with some amusement, staring at my own seasoned visage—not just the shiny new strands but some creases and scars, some spots and a receding hair line; crow\u2019s feet around the eyes, extra “bits” here and there. \u00a0Was it at this point in life that I\u2019m supposed to freak out?<\/p>\n
While locked in a stare at the image in the mirror I suddenly remembered looking at the same face thirty years previous on a particular day in June. I was fifteen.\u00a0 My face told a much different story: not of getting old but of not getting old. Greasy strands of hair stood so sparse on my head I could see my scalp like a mountain in wintertime when the missing foliage reveals the ridge line. My lips and mouth were cut and crusty red with hundreds of sores\u2013 a bizarre side effect of a chemotherapy drug. It was excruciating to drink water let alone eat food. So there\u00a0 I was in the hospital with an IV in my arm and isolated due to a lowered immunity. The trip to the bathroom required some maneuvering of the IV pole and an immodest hospital gown. And there in the mirror I caught a terrifying glimpse of someone: a freak. I had hit bottom. The youthful ambitions of being popular, rich and a rock star were a empty pursuit for others to entertain.\u00a0 Would I be handed a billion dollars and my own TV show at that moment my net worth would still have been zero. I had almost forgotten that image…that boy in the mirror… long ago..so long ago………<\/p>\n
But now, today, amazingly, I stand in the mirror with gray hair, male pattern baldness and all the honorable badges of middle age.<\/p>\n
So what’s the problem?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently while looking into the mirror it occurred to me that the glistening locks of hair were not the results of the new conditioner I was using but the silver tint of gray hair! Me? Gray hair? It seemed preposterous. I shared this revelation with my wife who marveled that I was just noticing it\u2014apparently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tradition"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accipite.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}